Strange ASCII character and Tab Stops in Header

[Christy Longgrear]

This is my first post. I hope I've gotten my question in the proper area.

I'm somewhere between beginner and intermediate working with forms and the
following is a problem I'm having with some text form fields and using style
refs in headers.

I have a proposal form with 5 separate sections. Three of the 5 sections
are protected. We have a format for our proposals where we want the scope of
work centered in the header then on a second line in the header we have the
Project Name left aligned and then the Proposal number right aligned. Again,
all this information is reflected in the header.

I've tried to accomplish this via 2 different methods.

It is important to note that one of the unprotected sections in this
document is the body of the letter (we do a letter format for all our
proposals due to the descriptive nature of our work, environmental
consulting). Where I'm running into a problem is when the unprotected body
portion of this forms runs onto a 2nd page Word does not adopt the tab
settings of the first page of the document for the second page and also it
appears that an additional carriage return is causing the 2nd line of the
header to go to a third line. I have searched for a solution for universally
setting the header tab stops (so that additional pages created will adopt the
same header format/style). It is worth mentioning that I think the problem
I have is that for whatever reason the left aligned ANYTHING in the header
seems to arbitrarily add a carriage return. You will note the similarity
with having the same problem using a table as described below.

The second method I tried to use was by placing a table in the header
instead of using the tab stops. For whatever reason the cell that is aligned
for the left aligned information inserts a square object (ASCII for carriage
return I think) immediately following the last character in the header. This
only seems to happen in the cell that is left aligning.

Again, ultimately, I believe the problem is somehow related to a carriage
return being always automatically entered for anything that is left aligned
in the header.

Anyone got any ideas on how to prevent this from happening?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you paste material into a header, you'll find that an extra, empty
paragraph is always added. You can delete this. Note also that if you're
using the default Header style but want only text left-aligned and
right-aligned, you'll want to delete the center tab stop in the center. If
you leave it in, then you need two tab characters for short text (that
doesn't reach the tab stop), but longer text will overrun it, causing your
right-aligned material to go to the next line.

If your headers are set up correctly, it's likely that you have enabled
"Different first page." In this case your First Page Header and Header are
actually different, so changing the tab settings in one does not affect the
other unless you actually modify the Header style.

The "square object" you are referring to is the end-of-cell marker. If you
increase the zoom, you'll see it's actually character 0164 the "universal
monetary symbol"; see http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NonPrintChars.htm

 

[Christy Longgrear]

Thank you Suzanne for your quick response.

I need to clarify a couple of things I think.

The "square" that appears at the end of the text when I use a table to try
to get the header to align properly is not the end of cell character. It is
an actual square, well more like a rectangle, the end of cell character to my
knowledge does not print on documents. The rectangular/squarish object that
appears DOES print on documents which we can live with if there isn't a work
around, it just does not look perfectly professional to me.

Further, when I use the table method with STYLEREF, for whatever reason the
rectangular/squarish object only appears in the STYLEREF area for the left
aligned cell. Further, the object also only appears in the header of pages
that are a continuation of a previous page. The subsequent pages that are
separated by a page break for the Proposal Acknowledgement Form and Terms &
Conditions do not have this character in the header. So, it must also have
something to do with extra pages that are creating when filling in the
unprotected section of the body of the letter. I suppose that because of the
behavior (an obvious paragraph/return) when I don't use tables, I'm assuming
that the squarish object is ASCII for a return.

If necessary, I can send you the document for you to see what I'm seeing.
I've done substatial playing around with both the plain tab aligned header
and the table/cell aligned header.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Yes, send me the doc and I'll have a look.