columns/right margin bug

[David]

Word 2004 continues to have a bug that was present in Word X and previous
versions. The bug concerns a bad interaction between landscape/portrait
mode Page Setup changes and columns.

Take a single-column document for which Page Setup specifies, say,
portrait mode. Turn it into landscape mode, and the margins adjust to the
new paper orientation. No problems yet.

Take the same document, turn it into 2-columns. Now turn it back to 1
column (with "Select All", change columns). Now turn it into landscape
mode. Not only do the margins not adjust automatically, but they cannot be
manually adjusted either! You can move the little margin thingy in the ruler
all you want, or change relevant menu settings -- but it doesn't change
anything in the text.

The problem also shows up in moving from landscape to portrait, which is
actually where it affects me. I have lots of documents with text in 2
columns, intended to be printed in landscape mode (with reduction). I often
want to revert these documents to portrait mode, 1 column (no reduction).
When I do this, the text rolls off the screen and off the page on the right
side, and no fiddling with the margins or document menu settings can make
things right.

The step of switching from 2-column back to 1 is also not crucial to
revealing this bug. What's particularly strange is the fact that Word seems
to have a memory of the fact that a document *used* to be 2-column, even
if you've switched it back to 1-column.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Word 2004 continues to have a bug that was present in Word X and previous
versions. The bug concerns a bad interaction between landscape/portrait
mode Page Setup changes and columns.

Take a single-column document for which Page Setup specifies, say,
portrait mode. Turn it into landscape mode, and the margins adjust to the
new paper orientation. No problems yet.

Take the same document, turn it into 2-columns. Now turn it back to 1
column (with "Select All", change columns). Now turn it into landscape
mode. Not only do the margins not adjust automatically, but they cannot be
manually adjusted either! You can move the little margin thingy in the ruler
all you want, or change relevant menu settings -- but it doesn't change
anything in the text.

The problem also shows up in moving from landscape to portrait, which is
actually where it affects me. I have lots of documents with text in 2
columns, intended to be printed in landscape mode (with reduction). I often
want to revert these documents to portrait mode, 1 column (no reduction).
When I do this, the text rolls off the screen and off the page on the right
side, and no fiddling with the margins or document menu settings can make
things right.

The step of switching from 2-column back to 1 is also not crucial to
revealing this bug. What's particularly strange is the fact that Word seems
to have a memory of the fact that a document *used* to be 2-column, even
if you've switched it back to 1-column.

I can reproduce this for documents over one page in length.

Round-tripping from 1 to 2 columns, or 2 to 1 column, fixes it for me in
both Word v.X and Word 2004.

 

[John McGhie]

Hi David:

The "Columns" setting of text is a property of the section break following
the piece of text in question.

Section breaks can be slippery little sods, and often hide in Page Layout
View. Switching to Normal View often reveals them. However, if you have
been changing column settings by selecting text, often the section break is
inserted at the end of the last paragraph in the selection, which if that
paragraph ends close to the right margin, makes the section break very
difficult to see.

If all else fails, use Replace to get them out. Choose Edit>Replace. Click
the blue arrow to reveal the power user's features, then choose
Special>Section Break. Make sure the Replace With box is empty (not simply
blank: it must be empty). Then hit Replace All.

That leaves you with only one section break in the document. The default
section break is right at the bottom of the document, right below the final
paragraph mark. It can never be seen or removed (because it contains the
entire structure for the file).

Now you will be able to reset your columns, orientation or whatever without
problems.

If you are working with a document that has suffered a of of rough handling,
the default section break may be corrupt. In which case nothing will work
right until you do a Maggie. To do a Maggie, select all of the document
EXCEPT the final paragraph mark and COPY. Be careful with your selection:
if you copy the final paragraph mark, you copy your problem. Create a new
blank document and PASTE.

This leaves the corrupted section break behind. Save the file under a new
name, and check it visually for errors. If the section break was badly
corrupt, bits of text may be missing, and some styles may have disappeared.

If you are working in Word 2003 or 2004, you can save the document as a Web
Page and then open the web page version and re-save as a Word document.
This does a nicer clean-up: it discards all the corruptions but you are much
less likely to lose anything valuable (and you will be warned on Save if you
are about to). You can attempt a save to web page in earlier versions of
Word, but you *will* lose stuff, and you may not find the result useable.

Just for future reference, dragging the margins around in the ruler comes
under the heading of "Rough Handling". Do not do this to documents you need
to keep: it's likely to break them

Hope this helps

Word 2004 continues to have a bug that was present in Word X and previous
versions. The bug concerns a bad interaction between landscape/portrait
mode Page Setup changes and columns.

Take a single-column document for which Page Setup specifies, say,
portrait mode. Turn it into landscape mode, and the margins adjust to the
new paper orientation. No problems yet.

Take the same document, turn it into 2-columns. Now turn it back to 1
column (with "Select All", change columns). Now turn it into landscape
mode. Not only do the margins not adjust automatically, but they cannot be
manually adjusted either! You can move the little margin thingy in the ruler
all you want, or change relevant menu settings -- but it doesn't change
anything in the text.

The problem also shows up in moving from landscape to portrait, which is
actually where it affects me. I have lots of documents with text in 2
columns, intended to be printed in landscape mode (with reduction). I often
want to revert these documents to portrait mode, 1 column (no reduction).
When I do this, the text rolls off the screen and off the page on the right
side, and no fiddling with the margins or document menu settings can make
things right.

The step of switching from 2-column back to 1 is also not crucial to
revealing this bug. What's particularly strange is the fact that Word seems
to have a memory of the fact that a document *used* to be 2-column, even
if you've switched it back to 1-column.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410