A4 vs US Letter

[william gallagher]

Can you help, please?

I'm in the UK where we use A4 paper but someone I exchange documents
with, I've no idea who, occasionally sends me ones set up to be US
Letter size instead.

Only, every document I create in Word 2004 after opening one of these
is automatically set to US Letter too. Eventually I notice and change
my current document back, but it's exasperating. (If you don't happen
to know this, A4 is slightly longer than US Letter so pagination is
different and I end up staring at my printer wondering why my nice
formatting looks so strange.)

Do you know if there's a way to lock Word to A4 regardless? Or a macro
that will at least warn me?

Thanks for any help you can give me,
William

 

[John McGhie]

Set your Normal template to A4 and save it.

1) Close all other documents (that's right, ALL of them...)

2) Use File>Open to open your Normal template.

You just double-clicked it, didn't you? Go back and start again, it won't
work if you double-click it

3) Select the Printer you normally use (it won't allow you to set a paper
size the printer doesn't have...)

4) Set the correct paper size and margins

5) Add and remove a character from the text (sets the "Document dirty" flag
so we know Word will save it.

6) Save the template and quit Word (forces it to write the template back to
file immediately and clears the old one from memory).

Restart Word and it will work

Next time you get a letter-sized document, check it hasn't got a macro in it
that is making this change. This is not a change the template or a document
can make on its own.

You may wish to set the Preference to "Prompt to save Normal" and maybe
"Warn before opening a file that contains macros", either of which will
enable you to catch a macro trying to do this.

Cheers

Can you help, please?

I'm in the UK where we use A4 paper but someone I exchange documents
with, I've no idea who, occasionally sends me ones set up to be US
Letter size instead.

Only, every document I create in Word 2004 after opening one of these
is automatically set to US Letter too. Eventually I notice and change
my current document back, but it's exasperating. (If you don't happen
to know this, A4 is slightly longer than US Letter so pagination is
different and I end up staring at my printer wondering why my nice
formatting looks so strange.)

Do you know if there's a way to lock Word to A4 regardless? Or a macro
that will at least warn me?

Thanks for any help you can give me,
William

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[william gallagher]

Tremendous, thank you very much, John.

I've done that now, much appreciated.

William

 

[Elliott Roper]

Can you help, please?

I'm in the UK where we use A4 paper but someone I exchange documents
with, I've no idea who, occasionally sends me ones set up to be US
Letter size instead.

Only, every document I create in Word 2004 after opening one of these
is automatically set to US Letter too. Eventually I notice and change
my current document back, but it's exasperating. (If you don't happen
to know this, A4 is slightly longer than US Letter so pagination is
different and I end up staring at my printer wondering why my nice
formatting looks so strange.)

Do you know if there's a way to lock Word to A4 regardless? Or a macro
that will at least warn me?

Thanks for any help you can give me,

Have you done what Word help tells you to do?
'paper size' as a help query offers:-

Set the default paper size
1. On the Format menu, click Document.
2. Click Page Setup.
3. Select a paper size from the Paper Size pop-up menu, and then click
OK.
4. Click Default, and then click Yes.
Note Setting the default paper size changes the page size for the
template the current document was based on. If the current document is
based on the Normal template and you change the default paper size,
this change affects all new documents based on the Normal template. If
the current document is based on a template other than the Normal
template, only documents based on this template inherit the new page
size. Learn more about Microsoft Word templates.

In addition, you probably have the save preference 'prompt to save
normal template' unchecked, which if set, would have given you a
warning that something that will affect new blank documents was changed
in the Word session you are leaving.

The paper size depends on the template used to create the document, as
you can see from the help quoted above, so this is not a complete
prescription. I hope you have been encouraged to use the help and learn
about templates too.