Formatting Problems

[Paul Filkin]

I noticed this first in long documents, normally just as I
thought I was finished, but more recently in short ones
also.
If I apply bulletting, bold, underline etc.to a word in
the document the effect is aplied to the whole document.
I can then undo once and the effect is applied to where it
was originally intended.
More irritatingly as time goes on the footer at some point
sets itself to take up half the page and I can't reset it.
I now have to work with back-up documents after almost
every sentence to make sure I don't have to redo too much.
I am using Word as part of Office 2003 on WinXP.
Any assistance would be apreciated.

Thanks

paul.

 

[Sara]

See
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Formatting/WholeDocumentRefo
rmatted.htm

As for your footer, check Page Setup to make sure
Vertical Alignment is set at Top; also make sure there
are no empty returns in your footers taking up space.

 

[Orville]

I have the same problem, and it is driving me crazy. Any
change that I make to a paragraph is applied to the whole
document. I don't have the slightest idea of how to fix it.

 

[Orville]

I did some work with the problem, but I can't believe what
I found.
If you select one paragraph, apply formatting, the changes
occur to the whole doucument. I tried adding spaces before
the paragraph mark, but that did not work. The only thing
that worked was applying a change to the last letter in the
paragraph, and then separately applying the change to the
whole paragraph.
Where this is truely maddening is that if I apply a change
to a table cell, it changes the formatting in my entire
document. I have used Word very little, but bought it
because I have about a thousand pages of scientific work to
do. If I can't format individual cells in a table, I'm in
trouble. I don't remember this being a problem in earlier
versions. I may have to go back to an earlier version until
this is solved.

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Hi Orville

What has happened is that a style (probably Normal) is set to 'Automatically
Update'. For some reason this seems to have been set as the default in Word
XP early releases.

See
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Formatting/WholeDocumentReformatted.htm

 

[Guest]

This is my third post of this. I found that the problem had
something to do with my styles. I found an older paper that
had been formatted before I moved over to Word 2003. The
problem I mentioned earlier didn't exist in it. So, I just
copied the new styles into the papers I was having the
problems with. I don't have the slightest idea why it
works, but it seems to work for now.

 

[Paul Filkin]

Sara,

Thanks. The footer is a mystery still - no spaces,
vertical alighment at Top - but I changed the styles as
suggested and now the footer problem has disappeared as
well.

phew...!

Thanks