Turn off auto format

[Hebephrene]

I am on Office 2004. OSX. I want to turn off autoformat, in fact, I
would like to disable it. I have turned off all the buttons in auto-
correct, auto text, autocorrect/autoformat you name it, they are all
off. I have disabled Click and Type and I have gone to Preferences
Compatiblity and turned off everything there.

But some part of the little beastie still remains active. Because when
I type a line it wraps around and lines it up with the same
indentation and I cannot move it. It will not tab, it will not allow
me to giggle it over, it remains stubbornly justified with the line
above it.

If I had the choice I would never want anything ever autoformatted. It
takes so much time for me to go through this process that I feel like
if we could use all the time everyone on the planet spent trying to
get control of their text back we would have solved global warming by
now. Please help. Isn't there some way that we can turn this thing off
and never have to face it again? Thanks, Hebephrene

 

[CyberTaz]

Are you trying to get a First Line Indent? It sounds like you've applied a
Left Indent instead - perhaps even included it in a Style?

If that isn't it, please be more descriptive of the actual problem - the
in-depth detail about what you've turned on & off is appreciated, but I'm
not "seeing" anything more than what is addressed above. Justified? Left,
right, centered? "Lines up with.." which indentation - and how did taht
indentation get there?

 

[Hebephrene]

Are you trying to get a First Line Indent? It sounds like you've applied a
Left Indent instead - perhaps even included it in a Style?

If that isn't it, please be more descriptive of the actual problem - the
in-depth detail about what you've turned on & off is appreciated, but I'm
not "seeing" anything more than what is addressed above. Justified? Left,
right, centered? "Lines up with.." which indentation - and how did taht
indentation get there?

Thanks Bob, Let me try and be clearer. I have a list of words which
are all lined up as the document is set up for left justification (as
opposed to centered or right) . I type words and when I run out of
space, the sentence I am typing appears on the next line but also left
justified. I want to indent it. Much as one would do with an outline I
want the text on the second line not to receive the same prominence so
as (a) would be indented after 1. I want to control the position of
the text on the next line. And no this is not the first line of the
document. And I am not aware of this being a selected style. Very much
appreciate your getting back to me.

 

[CyberTaz]

If what you are looking for is a paragraph that
looks like this with the first line flush right
and the rest indented...

What you are looking for is called a "Hanging Indent" - to apply it, click
in the para, then go to Format>Paragraph - Indents & Spacing. Open the list
labeled Special: which displays (none) by default, then set the indent
amount in the adjacent value box labeled By:. You can also set/adjust the
amount of indentation on the Ruler using the controls at the left end where
the white meets the blue (Margin):

Top triangle = First line Indent
Bottom Triangle = Hanging (all other lines) Indent
Small Square = Left Indent (Moves both Top & Bottom Triangles)

BTW - what you describe is not controlled by any of the AutoFormat features.
In fact, Flush Left (no indents) is (and always has been) the default for
any word processing app I can remember going back to WordStar on the PC

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Stop all/most forms of autoformatting]

Bob, this is my first post into this forum so please bear with me.

The answer you just gave "Hebephrene" may help with this particular
formatting issue but you really didn't answer his underlying question, which
is "how do you turn of all forms of auto formatting in MS Word? Is there a
technique to disable most/all forms of auto formatting? I'm going crazy
changing my tables from document to document what with all the auto
formatting for table justification and column width. Isn't there some way to
just turn these features off so that I can move my column lines as far left
and right as I want without MS Word doing anything?

I noticed you're an MVP so you're my last hope for help in this area.

thanks

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Go to Tools>AutoCorrect... And turn off everything you see in there.

However, what you just described is not "auto formatting".

Like Nature, Word abhors a vacuum. Almost everything has a "default" value,
which MUST exist otherwise the document cannot operate.

The trick to high-productivity usage of Word is not to turn the stuff OFF
but to get it working FOR you. Word is trying to help -- it's important to
allow it to do that, otherwise you risk spending an awful lot of money on
something that is no better than a typewriter.

Begin by looking up "AutoText" and "Styles" in the Help.

Format some basic styles to set your text the way you like it (most of the
styles you will need already exist in your Normal template; customise them
as you wish).

Format one or two table samples the way you like them and save them as
AutoTexts. Then you can insert them whenever you want one with a single
click.

Some people get a bit frustrated because they try to "save time" by not
setting Word up to work the way they want it to in the first place. They
then end up having to correct every document, every time, until they are
spending so much time "correcting" badly-specified defaults that they don't
have time for anything else.

The key to it is to sit down and say "I am going to get this feature by the
throat, fully understand it, and force it to do what *I* want."

Clive wrote a whole book about it:
http://word.mvps.org/Mac/Bend/BendWordToYourWill.html

Cheers


On 8/2/07 12:23 PM, in article
(e-mail address removed), "Stop all/most forms of
autoformatting" <Stop all/most forms of autoformatting

Bob, this is my first post into this forum so please bear with me.

The answer you just gave "Hebephrene" may help with this particular
formatting issue but you really didn't answer his underlying question, which
is "how do you turn of all forms of auto formatting in MS Word? Is there a
technique to disable most/all forms of auto formatting? I'm going crazy
changing my tables from document to document what with all the auto
formatting for table justification and column width. Isn't there some way to
just turn these features off so that I can move my column lines as far left
and right as I want without MS Word doing anything?

I noticed you're an MVP so you're my last hope for help in this area.

thanks

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[CyberTaz]

John has given you some very solid advice - especially that which pertains
to "Bend Word...". In my own defense, however , I didn't address the
"underlying question" because the OP had *already done* everything that can
be done with regard to AutoFormat, AutoCorrect & AutoFormat As You Type
features. Further, the issue posted did not involve *any* of them.

The problem was a matter of Paragraph Formatting - What the OP wanted was
something that deviated from the default as John points out. As for myself,
I use Hanging Indents far less frequently than Left Aligned. Actually, the
underlying & overt question was "I know about all the Auto... Features,
_have_ turned them Off & still can't do what I wan to do - where do I go
from here?"

If Word's default were Hanging I'd be in the same boat you seem to consider
yourself in now, having to reformat every para I typed. Fortunately, the
default for "most" of Word's features are set to what is considered the
'norm' across a wide range of users based on language standards... Although
some don't seem so, perhaps. If a user needs to change settings it can
typically be done & if those are prevalent in that user's mainstream
workflow, provisions exist for customizing the program as John also
indicates.

If you follow his suggestions you may want to follow that up with an
investigation of custom templates as well.. Regardless of whether you use
only one set of specs for *every* doc you do or generate a variety of
different types of docs that each have their own requirements.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac



On 2/7/07 8:23 PM, in article
(e-mail address removed), "Stop all/most forms of
autoformatting" <Stop all/most forms of autoformatting