Word Document Format Changes

[Michael Moskaluk]

One of my users has had problems with some Word documents that she
previously created. When recently opened, these documents display and
print with what appears to be page breaks, every couple lines. She
ends up with a 10 page print-out from a one-page original document.
She is using Office V:X, patched to 10.1.5 on an iMac at 10.2.6.
Re-installing word makes no difference, neither does disk first aid or
repair file permissions. I have also tried deleting the word settings
preference file. When these documents are e-mailed to another user,
they appear and print correctly. Any suggestions

 

[Clive Huggan]

Hello Michael,

My first suspicion is that the definition of a style in the document has
been inadvertently changed to include a "page break before". Before I go
further (and unless someone else comes up with a brilliant solution that I
haven't conceived), could you give more details?:

What is the style allocated to the paragraphs affected?

Does the page break appear only where this style appears?

If the answer to the second question is "no", please describe *exactly*
where the page breaks appear and anything else that appears at all unusual.
Don't spare the detail!

--Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
========================================================

 

[Michael Moskaluk]

Hi Clive,
The forced breaks are dotted and don't appear to be the same as a page
break.
In most cases the user doesn't appear to be applying styles to the
affected document. They appear to be covered by the "normal" style.
When we go into the document, select the text and change to the
paragraph style (or any other style), the breaks disappear and the
document can be viewed and formatted normally.

Another thing we tried was to log-onto her system as the root user and
then opened up her documents that are acting up. When logged in as a
different user, the document formatting behaves itself and everything
prints fine.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Michael,

Since the problem appears to occur only with this one user, perhaps it lies
with the printer settings for that user. Go into Page Setup and make sure
she has "Format For" set to her printer and not to Any Printer. Check the
other settings there (default paper size, etc.) and make sure they're
correct.

Another (long-shot) possibility. Maybe corruption in her Normal template is
to blame so try testing it:

Quit Word and navigate to her Normal template which should be in
/Applications/Microsoft Office X/Templates/. Rename Normal to something else
(like OldNormal), then relaunch Word (which will create a new Normal).

Open the problem document, turn on Show/Hide Formatting, copy all but the
very last paragraph mark, and paste into a new blank document. Try printing
now. If all is well, that would confirm OldNormal as the problem.

If the user has customizations, etc, in OldNormal that she wants to
maintain, you can use Organizer to transfer those from OldNormal to the
newly-created Normal template. Then you can trash the old renamed file. To
learn how to use Organizer, see here:
<http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/WordMac/MacWordNormalTemplate.htm>

If this doesn't fix the problem, quit Word again, trash the new Normal and
rename OldNormal back to Normal.

Hope something here helps.

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/WordMac/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word]]

Hi Michael:

OK, "dotted" breaks are "computed" page breaks. Word inserts them to show
you where the page breaks are likely to fall. So your question becomes
"what's causing them to be likely to fall *there*?"

Clive is quite correct: it's a paragraph property that is cause it. It can
be one or more of "Page Break Before", "Keep Lines Together", "Widow/Orphan
Control" or "Keep With Next".

The property can be directly applied to one ore more of the affected
paragraphs, or to the style, or to a mixture of both. Just to add to the
excitement, Word's styles are hierarchial, they inherit properties from the
styles above them in the tree. In this case the first place I would look is
Normal Style itself, because unless you correct this (and you should)
*every* style in the document inherits its base properties from there.

So how about we start by using Edit>Clear Formats to remove ALL of the
formatting and rest those paragraphs to Normal style.

Then have a look. Allow a moment for the document to repaginate and you
should see normal page breaks happening.

If the problem is still there after that, check your Normal style for the
four properties I have mentioned, and particularly, check to see that the
"Automatically Update" box is NOT checked when you hit Modify. If it is
checked, any change to any paragraph with that style becomes the new style
definition and you end up in an endless circle problem.

If the Normal style is OK and "Automatically Update" is NOT checked, then we
have a different problem and I want you to get back to me: I will need to
ask you a lot more questions to find out what is going on with that
document.

Hope this helps

This responds to microsoft.public.mac.office.word on 22 Jan 2004 14:06:54
-0800, (e-mail address removed) (Michael Moskaluk):

Hi Clive,
The forced breaks are dotted and don't appear to be the same as a page
break.
In most cases the user doesn't appear to be applying styles to the
affected document. They appear to be covered by the "normal" style.
When we go into the document, select the text and change to the
paragraph style (or any other style), the breaks disappear and the
document can be viewed and formatted normally.

Another thing we tried was to log-onto her system as the root user and
then opened up her documents that are acting up. When logged in as a
different user, the document formatting behaves itself and everything
prints fine.

--

Please post all comments to the newsgroup to maintain the thread.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]