Top margins in linked text boxes are misaligned

[Ben]

I have a rather long document with linked text boxes. All is well and good,
except all but the first text box bring the top line of text closer to the
top of the text box. I have double checked and the text box margins are
exactly the same, yet the first text box still looks like it has a larger top
margin.

Each text box needs to look the same for this publication and I am really
trying to avoid tweaking the margins on all but one text box on a document
that is nearing 100 pages in length.

If the margins are the same, shouldn't the text end up in the same place?

(Publisher 2003)

 

[Mary Sauer]

Do you have a border? A line? Does the text box actually have a larger margin or
are you just eyeing it? Are you checking the text box margins in the format
menu?
Is there a word that is assigned a larger font than the rest of the text?

 

[Charles W Davis]

Have you checked your Paragraph formatting?

Do you have a border? A line? Does the text box actually have a larger
margin or are you just eyeing it? Are you checking the text box margins in
the format menu?
Is there a word that is assigned a larger font than the rest of the text?

--
Mary Sauer MSFT MVP
http://office.microsoft.com/
http://msauer.mvps.org/
news://msnews.microsoft.com

 

[Ben]

Paragraph/font formatting is the same from text box to text box. The text
box margins are also the same. And both text boxes have a border of 0.5. But
when I draw a line from one box to the next to check the vertical location of
the the text (the boxes are on different pages, but I have a two page spread
and the text boxes are aligned vertically in the same place), they're off by
..15 inches.

As a hack, I've begun increasing the margins of all but the first text box
from .05 to .2, but it seems like .05 should mean the same thing from box to
box, regardless of order in a string of linked text boxes.

 

[Mary Sauer]

Use the format painter, does that work?
Have you changed the baseline settings? View, baseline. Any paragraphs that are
set to align to baseline guides (baseline guides: Guides to which lines of text
can be aligned to provide a uniform appearance between columns of text.) will
continue to align whether or not the baseline guides are visible or hidden.

Default text boxes have a .04 margin. Have you thought about re-creating the
text boxes? When you add borders, text will shift. Remove the borders and use
the rectangle tool for your borders.

 

[Ben]

The format painter doesn't work (though I did not know about it, and frankly
it's awesome). It feels like a formatting issue in the text box. I use Styles
to make sure all my formatting is the same (for headings and such).

When I begin typing in a text box, with any Style of text, it comes out a
given distance from the top of the text box. But if that text carries over
into a linked text box, that same text (with the same formatting) is .15"
closer to the top of the box.

Wooooow. Wait a minute. I see something. I tried to recreate the problem and
couldn't, at first. It seemed to come out right.

But, In my styles formatting, I have defined line spacing both before and
after paragraphs. In the first text box in a series, for that first line,
Publisher is putting in the "before paragraph" defined space, but in the text
boxes it flows into, it just pushes the text right up against the top margin
(disregarding the "before paragraph" spacing). This is true if the text just
flows over or if there is a formal sections break (ctrl + enter).

So the question becomes, how can I make all the text boxes in a linked
series include the "before paragraph" spacing at the top of the text box?

-Ben


-Ben

 

[Mary Sauer]

Ben,
Can you send the file to me?

(e-mail address removed)

 

[Charles W Davis]

Ben,
I have the Paragraph style to have 6 pts before the paragraph and 0
following. Then on the first paragraph in an article, I manually change that
to 0 pts before. Seems to work for me. To see the results, see page 13, of
the April newsletter on this page: http://www.myscacc.org/newsletters.htm
(other pages have Continued on and Continued from notices on them)

 

[Mary Sauer]

Ben sent the file. It was a matter of tweaking the paragraph numbers and the
base line position.
In Ben's file I set the before and after paragraph to zero, between lines .75
and I checked "Align text to baseline guides."
I think most of the trouble is because Ben is using a "Quick Publication" rather
than starting from scratch.