Internal Measurement Unit

[Greg Maxey]

An interesting point came up in a docManagment post.

The Paragraph dialog box has an option for setting paragraph spacing before
and after. The unit of measurement displayed in this option is points (pt).
However, a user may enter other acceptable units of measure (e.g.,
centimeters (cm)) and Word converts this entry to points. Enter 3 cm click
OK, open the dialog again and it displays 85.05 pt.

If you convert 3 cm to points programmatically Word returns 85.03937. Close
enough of course, but what is the actual true physical space applied and
what is that central unit of measurement employed internally in Word?

Sub GetPointEquivelent()
MsgBox CentimetersToPoints(3)
End Sub

Is the actual space 85.0397 points and the dialog rounds to and displays
85.05? Or is the actual space determined by some other unit of measure that
approximates both 85.05 points and 3 cm?

Thanks.

 

[Tony Jollans]

Generally speaking, the internal unit used is the twip (equal to one
twentieth of a point), so the, presumably accurate, 85.0397 is rounded to
85.05 (85 and one twentieth) points.

This rounding, partly at least, explains why some fine adjustments cannot be
made, or appear not to 'take'.

 

[Pamelia Caswell via OfficeKB.com]

Thanks for that explanation, Tony.

The page layout > paragraph group of the ribbon shows 85.1 as the conversion
for 3 cm, but the paragraph dialog box shows 85.05. Because of your post, I
think I know which value MS Office is using. Still, MS should fix that
discrepancy.

Pam

Generally speaking, the internal unit used is the twip (equal to one
twentieth of a point), so the, presumably accurate, 85.0397 is rounded to
85.05 (85 and one twentieth) points.

This rounding, partly at least, explains why some fine adjustments cannot be
made, or appear not to 'take'.

An interesting point came up in a docManagment post.

[quoted text clipped - 17 lines]

Thanks.

 

[Greg Maxey]

Tony,

Thanks. I appreciate the information