Step-by-Step Visual Walkthrough: Double Spacing in Word Across All Devices
Re-formatting fresh documents every morning wastes precious writing time. If your workflow requires double spacing on every incoming brief, essay, or draft, update your software's underlying master stylesheet.
To establish permanent default spacing settings:
Open an empty document. Open the Paragraph dialog box from the Home ribbon. Set "Line spacing" to "Double", adjust "Before" and "After" padding values to 0 pt, and click the Set As Default button in the lower-left corner of the window. A modal prompt will ask whether you want to apply these parameters to the current document alone or to "All documents based on the Normal.dotm template". Select the template option and confirm.
You can achieve the same result via the Styles pane. Right-click the Normal style thumbnail inside the ribbon gallery, choose Modify, adjust your line height using the double-space icon within the formatting preview, select the radio button marked "New documents based on this template", and click OK. Every fresh document you create thereafter opens properly configured from your very first keystroke.