centering left justified paragraph

[Ric]

Hi,

Is there an easy way to centre a left-justified paragraph to a page, table
field, or tab position? That is, I want each line in the paragraph to be
left-justified but the whole paragraphed to be centred around a given
position. I know this can be done using a text box but it seems rather
cumbersome. Is there an easier way?

Thanks,
Ric

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

This is what I do when setting poetry. If I have to do a lot of poems, I try
to average the line lengths so that all the poems have the same left margin
without being too off-center.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Ric]

But what if you don't know what the length of a line is going to be? For
instance, I want to centre an address on a label, but I want the address to
be left-justified. However, since address widths can vary substantially, I
can't know apriori how much to adjust the margin. I suppose I could just
pick an arbitrary margin that is close enough for most cases. What would be
ideal, though, is if you could tell word I want to centre this paragraph but
still choose if you want the lines to be left or right justified, then word
would adjust the margins according the longest line in the paragraph.

I guess I could write a macro to do exactly that, but I'll probably end up
just doing it manually unless someone knows another trick or an existing
macro I can download.

Thanks,
Ric

 

[Tonya Marshall]

This is kind of fiddly, but start out with center justification and drag the
left margin over to the beginning of the longest line. Select the address and
left justify.
Tonya Marshall

 

[Tonya Marshall]

Oops, select the centered address and move the first line indent marker on the
ruler bar over to the beginning of the longest line and left justify it while it
is still selected.
Tonya Marshall

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I know exactly what you mean. Years ago, before I got my first Windows
system, I had a DOS database program called PC-File that did that
automatically, but there's no facility in Word to do this.

What I generally do is merge labels, eyeball them, and determine a left
indent that will generally center most of the addresses without causing any
runovers on the right. Then I close the labels document, go back to the mail
merge main document, set that left indent, and remerge the labels. (The
reason for doing it this way is that you can't set an indent on multiple
pages of labels all at once because there are section breaks between pages,
effectively splitting the tables.) Sometimes I do some hand tweaking on
individual labels, but obviously this would be difficult with very large
merges (I've never done more than 800 or so).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.