Word 97 in Windows XP to maintain formatting

[Charlie''s Word VBA questions]

Can I install Word 97 in Windows XP? I have Office 2003 with Word 2003
already installed.
However, I have many 97 documents that, when opened on 2003, line spacing
and text formatting is sufficiently changed to cause many, many problems.
These are student workbooks with font sizes of 12 and 14 points. Words on a
line flow to the next line causing paragraph/page overflow. Sometimes a word
actually fits on the line above. These documents contain a lot of formulas
and programming code examples so formatting and spacing is very precise and
critical. Even text forming formulas and program code in a table may
overflow resulting in misalignment of lines that must be precisely aligned.
I have tried every option I can think of including all compatibility options
as Word 6.0, 97 and 2003, with printer metrics turned on and off. The only
fixes I have come up with are doing things like reducing font size by .5
point, setting paragraph right indent by even as little as negative .05
inches. But I would have to do this line by line or paragraph by paragraph.
I spent nearly a week just finding (But not yet correcting) problems in ten
documents.
I am considering installing Word 97 to solve this problem (although I am not
sure it will). What conflicts will I encounter? Can I keep 2003 and 97? Is
there any other way to "freeze" spacing?

 

[Graham Mayor]

This is nothing to do with any difference between the file formats of Word
97 and Word 2003 (which are effectively the same) but with the fact that
different printer drivers (and possibly different releases of the font
files) were used to create the documents. Word formats according to the
current printer driver. You would have to have the same printer driver (and
I mean the driver not the printer) and font outlines present as when you
created the document in Word 97. Adding Word 97 to your current installation
will not affect the issue.
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/TextReflow.htm

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Charlie''s Word VBA questions]

Thank you, Graham.
In fact, the old printer driver (HP) is installed on the XP machine as well
as a new (Canon) printer driver. I have switched back and forth between
printers, with "Use printer metrics" both On and Off. While I could
sometimes see very minor differences in the display, that did not resolve the
problem. And yet, a very small difference such as right indenting a test
paragraph by -.05" solved the problem for that one paragraph. I guess I
don't really understand how Word uses the printer to format the display and
print.
I also tried to install the old Arial font after renaming it "OldArial", but
Windows was smart enough to prevent it. I also took a snapshot of a test
paragraph on both machines and viewed them at 10x zoom. I didn't see any
differences in the pixels for each letter nor for spacing between letters.
It was just a guess on my part.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You might also try selecting "Do full justification like WordPerfect" in
Tools | Options | Compatibility. This usually compresses justified lines a
bit.



"Charlie''s Word VBA questions"

 

[Charlie''s Word VBA questions]

Thanks, Suzanne. Unfortunately, that didn't help.
Maybe it is helpful if I point out that (I'm rough estimating, not counting)
about 60 % or so of the paragraphs are not a problem. This is probably
because they are left justified and each line ends a sufficient distance from
the margin. I guess that about 30% or so of the paragraphs have one or more
words that flow to the next line. Probably only 2 or 3% of the paragraphs
have (usually) only one or two words that flow to the preceding line in the
paragraph. This is rare.
Frankly, none of this makes any sense to me, since I verified that the font,
font size and margins did not change.
Is there any possibility that Word calculates space between words or from
the end of a line to the margin, even if the paragraph is left-justified? If
so, could their algorithms have changed? I'm really clutching at straws, I
know.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I suspect there really was a change in metrics somewhere along the line. I
don't remember whether it was between 97 and 2002 or earlier that I saw
this, but I know that I had a complex lease form that, when opened in a
newer version, was actually cutting text off at the edge. I forget whether
the problem was with table cells that weren't quite wide enough any more or
right-aligned tab stops that had to be moved a hair in from the margin or
what, but it was very annoying.



"Charlie''s Word VBA questions"

 

[Charlie''s Word VBA questions]

Thank you for the info, Suzanne.
I have had several cases where the text no longer fits within a table cell,
so I bet you are right. When I changed the spacing between cells from .03 to
..02, it fit OK. Unfortunately, I have hundreds of tables.
I wrote a macro using "Selection.Information" to show a MsgBox with the
exact position of the cursor in inches, points and twips. There is a small
difference. For example, at the end of a given line, the measurement from
the left edge of the page in Word 97 was 6.19514 inches (446.05 points) and
in Word 2003, it was 6.29097 inches (452.95 points). Even less than a tenth
of an inch (or even a hundredth) can really make quite a difference.
Interestingly, the distance from the top of the page was LESS. In Word 97,
it was 6.36111 inches (458.00 points) and in 2003, it was 6.27361 inches
(451.70 points). This also doesn't explain why a word in another paragraph
was moved up to the preceding line.

In fact, I haven't really tested this very much, but even the macro display
(which includes spaces to "columnize" the measurement text) was different.

I am supposing there is no solution to this. I would prefer to not do so,
but I again ask whether Word 97 can be installed under XP. I can imagine
this might cause a whole new set of problems and seems like going backwards.

I really appreciate your ideas and advice.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Yes, Word 97 will run fine under Windows XP.



"Charlie''s Word VBA questions"

 

[Jay Freedman]

There is one known problem with Word 97 on Windows XP, that users without
Administrator privileges may not be able to run the spell checker. There's
an easy fix for it:
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/SpellGreyedOutWin2k.htm.

 

[Charlie''s Word VBA questions]

Your response that there was a change in metrics finally makes some sense to
me. However, one thing I just can't get past is this. If Word's metrics
make a line slightly wider, how can a word be moved UP to the preceding line.
This has really got me buggy. I have been working on several documents for
days and have a long way to go as this affects several dozen documents of
anywhere from 22 to 650 pages.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I don't think the problem is as simple as lines being wider or narrower,
more that the way Word determines the spaces between words may have changed,
or there may have been a change in the font metrics. But this is way outside
my field of expertise. You might try asking in
microsoft.public.word.printingfonts.



"Charlie''s Word VBA questions"

 

[Charlie''s Word VBA questions]

I have thought that it was more about spacing between words and lines than
the font. In fact, I copied the old Arial font and it didn't help. Since
Word has to compute spacing, that would make more sense. Many thanks for
your help.

 

[Charlie''s Word VBA questions]

I am at the point of wanting to try Word 97 in XP. I copied Word 97 and the
DLLs it wanted (there could be more). When I tried to run it, Windows issues
the message "There is not enough memory or disk space to run Word". I
suspect this is a standard CYA message when you try to do something Windows
doesn't like. Anyway, if I use Add/Remove programs to remove Word, it seems
to want to remove Office 2003. Excel, PowerPoint, etc. are fine and I want
to leave them alone. Also, I have already customized options and tool bars
in Word 2003. Is there a way to "disable" only Word or even lie to XP that
there is no Word? I don't want to install Office 97, only Word 97. I can
see that it would be likely to have a real mess with trying to do this. I
want Word 97 only as a test -- if it doesn't solve my problems, I need to be
able to get rid of it easily and be able to simply restore Word 2003. Any
recommendations??

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You can't "copy" Word; you must install it from the Office CD. If you do a
custom install, you can select just the applications and features you want
to install.



"Charlie''s Word VBA questions"

 

[Charlie''s Word VBA questions]

Yes, that makes good sense. But, what about the fact that Word 2003 is
already installed. Won't there be a conflict with 2 winword's, .dll's, etc?
Many supporting files have the same name.
And, by the way, I know and appreciate your patience and help.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Install it in a different folder. There will be competition. If you
double-click a Word file in Explorer, it will open in whichever version of
Word you used more recently, and you may get an "Installing..." notice when
you start the other version.

Users who run several versions of Word as a matter of course (for testing
purposes) often use virtual machines created by Virtual PC or VMware.



"Charlie''s Word VBA questions"

 

[Charlie''s Word VBA questions]

I installed Word 97 as you indicated. However, when I opened a document, the
same problems were still there. I have tried using the old fonts, the old
printer driver, various Word options and compatibility settings, and have
gotten nowhere. The only thing I know to do is go back and reformat every
paragraph, including very precise format settings for text in table cells to
create formulas. Unfortunately, most of these documents are training
workbooks and have to deal with mainframe programming code which, for
example, requires that an instruction or line of code must be on a single
line. I also have a technical book where the publisher issues supplements of
only changed pages, so I don't yet know how to handle this. I figure all
this will take me several weeks. I did have some minor formatting problems
when I went from Word 6.0 to Word 97, but nothing like this.

I really appreciate all the ideas offered by you and others in this
discussion group.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I see you have not posted a question in microsoft.public.word.printingfonts
as I suggested.



"Charlie''s Word VBA questions"

 

[Keith Dunbar]

I completed a website with publisher and it looked perfect on my computer.
When I saw it on a computer in an Internet Cafe it was too small for the
screen. Is this a similar problem?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

No, this more likely has to do with the screen resolution. You need to post
such questions in a Publisher NG.