Background Repagination Doesn't Stay On

[John C.]

Does anyone know why selecting Background Repagination in the Word
General Preferences is not a permanent or global solution? I work in Normal
view most of the time. I regularly turn this feature on only to find that the
next time I open the Document and add to it I have to turn it on again. I
would rather that it just stay on all the time. I have tried turning it on and
saving a new Normal template etc. I have had this problem since at least
Word 98.

Any ideas?

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi John,

From a previous post by John McGhie:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yep The preference is buggy. However, it doesn't matter, since Word
ignores it.

It's a legacy of the days when machines were far less powerful than they are
today: there is no longer any need for the setting. But it's one of those
things that is deeply buried in the Word code: they would take it out if
they could, but it's too much work -- it would take development time away
from things that are much more needed.

I suggest that you simply ignore the setting: Word does These days,
Word can paginate in only one place: the background. It will do it in
Normal View whenever it needs to (which is rarely) and in Page Layout View
constantly (because pagination is required to generate Page Layout View).

For best speed, work in Normal View: pagination is suppressed, which makes
Word work much faster, and various non-printing things are shown so it is
easier to edit. For finalizing a document, work in Page Layout View. It's
99 per cent WYSIWYG, but it paginates every time you make a substantive
change, which slows Word down a lot.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/WordMac/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>