Tips for fixing pesky those formatting problems

Published on: January 23rd, 2018

“Can you help me? I don’t know what’s wrong with this.”

 

I have often been called into co-workers’ offices to help with formatting problems in Microsoft Word.  When you’re working in Word and the material doesn’t look right and you’re not able to make the changes necessary for the look you want, what do you do?

Do you know how to import text from another document, or off the Web, and get “just the text, man, just the text,” without the original formatting? I can help.

When a document isn’t formatting correctly, the first thing I do is to toggle the “show/hide paragraph marks” to ‘on’. The symbol is usually on the top ribbon in the formatting area and looks like this: ¶

When it is turned on you can see how many spaces there are between words/sentences, the difference between “carriage returns” at the end of sentences vs. tabs, etc. Sometimes when a paragraph won’t justify correctly it is because there is a Tab somewhere in the text where there should be either a space or a return. Remove the Tab and the paragraph should justify correctly.

For example, there are two large open spaces in the following paragraph – what’s up with that?
“IN the beginning man scratched in the earth with a stick. This method had its limitations. While he could share information with those standing next to him,            he was unable to share that information with neighboring tribes, and he experienced the devastation of lost data every time it rained.         Things didn’t improve much with smoke signal technology either – information could be shared with neighbors, but again, the rains made data transmission impossible.”

When Paragraph Marks is turned on, we can see where all the spaces are, and the return at the end of the paragraph, but what are those arrows?  Those are Tab marks, and until they’re removed, the paragraph will not justify correctly because of the spaces created by the Tab commands.
“IN the beginning man scratched in the earth with a stick. This method had its limitations. While he could share information with those standing next to him,  he was unable to share that information with neighboring tribes, and he experienced the devastation of lost data every time it rained.  Things didn’t improve much with smoke signal technology either – information could be shared with neighbors, but again, the rains made data transmission impossible.”

 

What else can you look at to check formatting? On the Home screen, click into Paragraph and check each area to see if there is some odd setting that sticks out (ex. there is an indentation set, or the “line spacing after” is set to 6 – I see that a lot and it’s quite annoying). Adjust anything that appears amiss and check the effect on your text.

If after all your efforts you’re unable to figure out what is causing the formatting problem, highlight the entire text and hit the “clear formatting” icon located on the menu ribbon (it looks like an A with an eraser). That will clear all formatting and you can start from scratch. Sometimes it’s just faster and easier to clear everything and start over than to waste a lot of time trying to figure out and fix what is causing the problem.

One of my favorite commands is to paste plain text. Let’s say you want to cut and paste a recipe off the Web, but you don’t want the pictures, ads and goofy formatting that are on the screen. Go ahead and highlight everything you want to copy, pictures and all, and then go to your Word document and click and release these keys, one at a time (don’t hold them down): “alt” “e” “s.” The Paste Special screen will pop up. Choose “Unformatted Text” and hit enter. Voila! You get just the text….as in the example below:

ORIGINAL MATERIAL:

IMPORTED AS UNFORMATTED TEXT:

Baked Asparagus Dip Recipe
Baked Asparagus Dip Recipe photo by Taste of Home
BAKED ASPARAGUS DIP RECIPE
Read Reviews (5)
Publisher Photo Since I’m from Wisconsin, I thought it was only logical to put together a vegetable and a cheese—two of the foods my state produces in abundance. —Sandra Baratka, Phillips, Wisconsin
Featured In: 26 Ways to Eat Asparagus This Spring
MAKES:
8 servings
TOTAL TIME:
Prep/Total Time: 30 min.
RATE COMMENT SAVE PRINT
VERIFIED BY Taste of Home Test Kitchen
QUICK
INGREDIENTS
1 pound diced cooked fresh asparagus, drained
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup mayonnaise
Snack rye bread
DIRECTIONS
Blend asparagus, cheese and mayonnaise. Place in a 2-cup ovenproof bowl. Bake at 375° for 20 minutes. Serve with snack rye breads. Yield: 6-8 appetizer servings.

 

You can see how quickly the unformatted text can be formatted to your liking, versus trying to fix, delete and rearrange the original material. For those times that you have a lot of text to import and format, using the unformatted text command can save you hours of work and a lot of stress.

I hope these tips will help you in your work. Have patience and remember that there is always a reason why material displays the way it does – you simply need to put on your detective hat to figure out the reason why, and once you know that, you’ll be able to fix just about anything.

Rock on, Word Warriors!