What Line Am I On?

Word provides you a number of informational items on the status bar, all designed to help you know where your insertion pointer is located within your document. One of the items normally listed in the status bar is the line number on the current page. For instance, Ln 31 tells you that your insertion pointer is located on line 31 of the current page.

The line position indicator doesn't show up all the time in Word, however. For instance, the line counter never shows up if you are in Web Layout view. In addition, the indicator is disabled if you have the Wrap to Window check box selected on the View tab of the Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 the check box is entitled Show Text Wrapped within the Document Window and is visible in the Advanced area of the Word Options dialog box.) Finally, you won't see a line indicator if you have background pagination turned off in Word.

You should also be aware that the validity of what you see in the line indicator is affected by various settings and conditions. Most notably, the number will not be valid if Word is in the middle of repaginating your document. If you have a very large document that you just opened, then Word can take quite a while to do the repagination, depending on the speed of your machine and how many other tasks the machine is performing.