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Mac Forum / Applications / Word / March 2006Loss of paragraph formatting in Word
I have a Word document which was exported from another program. It should have a 6pt space after each paragraph, but there is no space between paragraphs. The Format/Paragraph settings show a 6pt space after each paragraph. There are paragraph marks after each paragraph. If I insert a new paragraph into the document it has the correct spacing. If I open the document in Textedit or Pages, the spacing is correct. Can anyone suggest what is going on and how I can get Word to show the correct paragraph spacing? Thanks > I have a Word document which was exported from another program. It should > have a 6pt space after each paragraph, but there is no space between [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > anyone suggest what is going on and how I can get Word to show the correct > paragraph spacing? Try defining a named style with the 6pt after, apply that style to a paragraph, then hit cmd-space (normal for style). If that works, find and replace might let you fix the lot. I'd not recommend this if there was tons of manual formatting applied to the text. Run, don't walk, to the MVP web site and download Clive Huggan's /Bend Word to Your WIll/ http://word.mvps.org/mac/UsingWord-macIndex.html#TakeCharge is a good place to snag it from. The stuff on styles is essential reading for anyone lifting text from other programs.  SignatureTo de-mung my e-mail address:- fsnospam$elliott$$ PGP Fingerprint: 1A96 3CF7 637F 896B C810 E199 7E5C A9E4 8E59 E248 Thanks for taking the trouble to reply. Unfortunately the new style suggestion didn't work. The paragraph settings show a 6pt after space, but it doesn't appear in the document. I'll take a look at the Clive Huggan document. > > I have a Word document which was exported from another program. It should > > have a 6pt space after each paragraph, but there is no space between [quoted text clipped - 19 lines] > The stuff on styles is essential reading for anyone lifting text from > other programs. Since you can open the doc in TextEdit, try using Save As to create an RTF. See if that behaves better in Word. If not, what is the source of the doc & what file format is it? Regards |:>) Under some circumstances, Word will use HTML formatting rules. This means that if two paragraphs have space below (10 pts) and space above (6 pts), the resulting space is the greater of the two measurements (10 pts) not the "sum" (16 pts). Go into Preferences>Compatibility and see if the document has that option set. There are quite a few other settings in there that could produce a similar effect. You could try setting that dialog to simply the "Word 2004" recommended options (everything off). The setting is mis-labelled. It's a per-document dialog, not application-wide. What you set applies only to the current document. However, if you change the settings and click Default, your settings then apply to all documents. Hope this helps On 27/3/06 10:52 PM, in article 7C1B482D-57F0-4F54-A6EB-FB7B9388B193@microsoft.com, "RogerB" > Thanks for taking the trouble to reply. Unfortunately the new style > suggestion didn't work. The paragraph settings show a 6pt after space, but it [quoted text clipped - 23 lines] >> The stuff on styles is essential reading for anyone lifting text from >> other programs. SignaturePlease reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email me unless I ask you to. John McGhie <john@mcghie.name> Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410 Thanks for this. I've reset the compatibility, but it still makes no difference. Very puzzling! "John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macinto" wrote: > Under some circumstances, Word will use HTML formatting rules. > [quoted text clipped - 44 lines] > >> The stuff on styles is essential reading for anyone lifting text from > >> other programs. Make a copy of that document, then Select All and Command + Option + q and Command + spacebar. That should fix it: if it doesn't, the document is corrupt. See below. What those commands do is restore ALL formatting in the document back to the default for the styles that have been applied. After that, any formatting problems you see MUST be in the style, so you know where to look :-) The reason for doing this on a "copy" is that if the styles were not correctly applied, it completely destroys the formatting :-) If the document is corrupt, in the original copy all except the last paragraph mark, create a new blank document and paste. This leaves the corrupted style table behind and the formatting should start to work after that... Get back to us if this doesn't work :-) On 28/3/06 7:00 AM, in article 1D8169B0-C417-4254-BEDE-0F2479943D24@microsoft.com, "RogerB" > Thanks for this. I've reset the compatibility, but it still makes no > difference. Very puzzling! [quoted text clipped - 52 lines] >>>> The stuff on styles is essential reading for anyone lifting text from >>>> other programs. SignaturePlease reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email me unless I ask you to. John McGhie <john@mcghie.name> Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410 Thanks for this. The Command + Option +q and Command + spacebar didn't work. However when I remove the last paragraph mark, the document reverts to a single paragraph (i.e. all the other paragraph marks disappear) and to a different font and size, but with the 6pt space after. So this means the original document is corrupt. I'd like to try and understand why, because it is an export from a writers' programme called Jer's Novel Writer. I get the same problem with each document I export from this programme, so there seems to be a problem with the way it treats Word exports. If anyone would like a sample Word document to examine, I'll happily send one. Thanks again "John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macinto" wrote: > Make a copy of that document, then Select All and Command + Option + q and > Command + spacebar. [quoted text clipped - 74 lines] > >>>> The stuff on styles is essential reading for anyone lifting text from > >>>> other programs. Hi Roger: Yeah, OK :-) The document is not actually "corrupt", it simply contains only ONE paragraph :-) There's three ways of indicating an "end of paragraph" in Word: The Unix-style "carriage-return", the Windows-style "carriage return" + "line feed", and the Word "End-of-paragraph". Chances are, the other program is sending hexadecimal "0D 0A" (carriage return and line feed). That's the Windows end-of-paragraph symbol in ASCII. So Word thinks it's an end-of-paragraph. Unfortunately, it isn't. It's a carriage return character followed by a line feed. The "paragraph mark" in Word is not a single character. It's a "container" that contains as many as several hundred pieces of information (I've never counted them: it's a lot) that contain all of the formatting properties of the preceding text. What we see on the screen is just a dummy character that indicates where the paragraph ends. The actual data stored there is in binary and can't be represented on screen. To convert those documents, what I suggest you do is use Find/Replace to search for whatever it is that's at the end of those paragraphs and replace it with ^p (that's caret plus lower-case p). That will cause Word to replace whatever is there with a "real" paragraph property container, which, among other things, will have a slot to contain the property "Space after = 6 pts". Chances are, if you "copy" whatever is at the end of those paragraphs and paste it into the Find box, Word will find whatever is in the text without your having to work out what is actually there. Otherwise, you need to go to each of those paragraph marks and press "Enter" there, to insert a real paragraph mark that can contain the formatting you want for those paragraphs. Hope this helps On 28/3/06 5:06 PM, in article FDC1C1FC-5255-4F68-92EF-19D5BE4AE43C@microsoft.com, "RogerB" > Thanks for this. The Command + Option +q and Command + spacebar didn't work. > However when I remove the last paragraph mark, the document reverts to a [quoted text clipped - 95 lines] >>>>>> The stuff on styles is essential reading for anyone lifting text from >>>>>> other programs. SignaturePlease reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email me unless I ask you to. John McGhie <john@mcghie.name> Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410 Many thanks for this John. It certainly helps me to understand what is going on. I'm also in touch with the developer of the software which produces the Word export, so I hope it will help him also. Unfortunately copying the end of paragraph mark seems to just put a space in the find and replace box, so that I get a new paragraph after every word. Is there any other way of finding out what is actually at the end of each 'paragraph'? Manually pressing 'enter' does work. Actually the easiest workaround for me at the moment is to export the document as rtf and then read that into Word. Thanks again Roger "John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macinto" wrote: > Hi Roger: > [quoted text clipped - 139 lines] > >>>>>> The stuff on styles is essential reading for anyone lifting text from > >>>>>> other programs. On 3/28/06 10:26 PM, in article C05065AF.3381D%john@mcghie.name, "John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]" <john@mcghie.name> wrote: > There's three ways of indicating an "end of paragraph" in Word: > > The Unix-style "carriage-return", the Windows-style "carriage return" + > "line feed", and the Word "End-of-paragraph". Oh, John... Time for you to get this straight. ;-) Unix-style is line feed (LF). That's what you get in TextEdit, for example. (In Word it's used only for "line-endings" that don't end paragraphs; in Word Mac, as typed with Shift-Return.) Mac OS-style is traditionally carriage return (CR). In OS X, CR still around in many apps (mostly legacy apps). That's also used in Word's VBA. It "appears" to be used in Word itself, but - as you say - it's only masquerading as a carriage return and really has all the hidden paragraph info tucked away as well. Yes, Windows (DOS) has carriage return + line feed (CRLF). That one is perfectly right. OS X itself is now mostly agnostic as to line ends. If you paste any text from anywhere into TextEdit, it treats LF, CR and CRLF _all_ as single line-ends. (You do not get run-ons with CR nor do you get double-returns with CRLF. all three of them produce what you'd want - a single line end, even TextEdit itself makes only LF when you type Return key. Isn't that smart of it? This doesn't change anything in your excellent advice, of course. But try to remember; Unix = LF, Classic Mac = CR, OS X can be either (and won't error on both). SignaturePaul Berkowitz MVP MacOffice Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html> AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/> Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be ignored. PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using - **2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions otherwise. |
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