Page width with a life of its own

[Steve]

Help.

I've got a long document which is refusing to layout as A4. I've tried all
the obvious things. File/Page setup/apply to whole document etc.

What originally happened was, I adjusted the right margin via the ruler in
page layout view. As I did so, the width of the page increased. I can't get
it back.

If I cut and paste the document into a new document with the same template,
the same things happens.

I can remove the problem by pasting as unformatted text, but then that
leaves me with the problem of sentence by sentence reformatting 150,000
words. But I guess that shows the problem is something to do with character
formatting.

But what? Any suggestions gratefully appreciated!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Did you really change the margin or the paragraph indent? It's very
difficult to drag the margin markers on the ruler but very easy to drag the
indent markers. Reset the paragraph format in the Format | Paragraph dialog
or by selecting the entire document (Ctrl+A) and pressing Ctrl+Q.

 

[Steve]

No, definitely dragged the margin. Anyway, it would be even weirder, I
think, if dragging the indent marker made the physical page wider!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If the page size is correctly set on the Paper tab of Page Setup, you
*can't* make the paper wider. If your text maintains its wider width when
pasted into a new document (provided you have pressed Enter a couple of
times in the new document before pasting and been careful not to copy the
last paragraph mark of the original document), then the paragraph formatting
is almost certainly the problem.