Word 2003 "Before Paragraph" space suppression

[Roxanne Laney]

Recently, my Word documents are suppressing the 6 points before paragraph
spacing. The settings are correct in the FORMAT/PARAGRAPH dialog box, but
when the box is closed, the before-paragraph spacing is not showing. That is,
if I select 6 points before, I see nothing. If I select 12 points spacing, I
see 6 points. This happens on styled text, new documents with the normal.dot
template and no styles. Older documents look fine. Can anyone tell me what to
fix? All my documents are coming out squished vertically on the page.

 

[Klaus Linke]

Hi Roxanne,

If you have two paragraphs, the first with some "space after" and the second
with some "space before", Word will by default use the larger of the two
values.

I think the behaviour changed with Word 2000. Previously, Word had simply
added the values.
If you don't like the "new" behaviour, you can change a compatibility
setting referring to HTML paragraph spacing (Tools > Options > Compatibility
up to Word 2003), in the documents, or in the template (for new documents).
Probably your old documents still have compatibility settings for Word 97 or
older...

Regards,
Klaus

 

[Roxanne Laney]

Thanks, Klaus, but I have not changed versions of Word. By "Old Documents", I
mean documents I created last month, versus ones I created this week, when
this problem started.

Any other ideas? Thanks, Roxanne

 

[Klaus Linke]

Hi Roxanne,

The setting may have been changed anyway...
The option is "Don't use HTML paragraph auto spacing".
Check it, close the dialog, and see if it makes a differennce.

Klaus

 

[Klaus Linke]

If that's not it after all, you might look at the definition of the
paragraph style you are using, and make sure that the check box to suppress
space between paragraphs of the same style is not checked (on the same
dialog as the "space before/after" settings).

Klaus

 

[Roxanne Laney]

Thank you, Klaus! This worked. You are right, ALL of the options were turned
off in this box. I checked "Don't use HTML paragraph autospacing" and
everything returned to normal. I am relieved. This problem was driving me
crazy.

 

[Roxanne Laney]

Another good thing to check. I had already looked at this option, but others
should know about it.

 

[Klaus Linke]

Hi Roxanne -- glad it's sorted now!

Thank you, Klaus! This worked. You are right, ALL of the options were
turned off in this box.

That should be the default, meaning all the options are set to work as
they're supposed to in your version.

Maybe you updated from Word 97, years back, and the options in your
Normal.dot template used to be set for the older version.
And then maybe that Normal.dot got hosed recently, say in a crash.

As said, the option setting comes from the template (probably Normal.dot)
when you create a new document, but then stays stored in the document.

You can decide whether you can get used to the new behaviour (option setting
off). Your old documents will still look and work as they used to.

Or, if not, you could open the template and make the change there, so all
new documents will "inherit" it.

Regards,
Klaus

Thank you, Klaus! This worked. You are right, ALL of the options were
turned
off in this box. I checked "Don't use HTML paragraph autospacing" and
everything returned to normal. I am relieved. This problem was driving me
crazy.