How to keep paragraph borders from indenting?

[Kathy]

At various points throughout a textbook chapter that I'm formatting, I'm
setting off exercise material from surrounding text by using a single-line
paragraph border at the bottom of the exercise material.

The problem is that in cases in where I indent last paragraph of the
exercise material, the single line below it also indents.

I want the single line border below the exercise material to stay
consistently flush left with the overall margin, instead of indenting when I
indent the associated exercise material. Is there a way to prevent the
paragraph border line from indenting?

Thanks -Kathy

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Unfortunately, no; a paragraph border is just that, and the "distance from
text" you set in the Border Options dialog applies to the current indent.
You might try putting the material in a table cell with a border, however.

 

[Kathy]

I did figure out a workaround, which is to associate the border with the
(unindented) top of the following text, rather than the (indented) bottom of
the indented preceding text.

Thanks for the table suggestion--I may need that in the future!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If the border isn't a box, then of course this method works very well.

 

[CyberTaz]

You can also use Tabs instead of Indents to keep the border at the left margin.

HTH |:>)

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Provided the text doesn't wrap; then it gets messy.

 

[Alex Ryan]

Microsoft Word team,

Please fix this.

I want the ability to draw boxes around any randomly selected text without
having to worry about how that text is formatted.

Only providing borders for (1) pages and (2) paragraphs is extremely limiting.

Surely you can do better?

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Alex;

The first thing that you should be aware of is that you're not communicating
with Microsoft here. This is a community of users supporting other users, so
your pleas won't change anything... We don't have the ability to do so. If
you want to offer suggestions, criticisms or feature requests to those who
have the power to make it happen you can do so by way of Word Options>
Resources> Contact Us (Word 2007) or a similar offering in the Help menu of
prior versions.

As to your current issue: Yes, you can do what you are asking, you just
can't do it with the Borders & Shading feature if the passage spans more
than one line. If it doesn't, just select the text, choose your B&S features
& apply to Text rather than to Paragraph... I can't give you specifics
because you didn't indicate what version you're using & method varies on
that basis.

Other options include the use of Text Boxes & other shapes that can contain
text including Callouts. You can also draw shapes around any portion of text
you wish, set the text wrapping appropriately & use transparent or no Fill
to allow the text to show through. Keeping the floating objects where you
want them to stay can be a definite problem because word processing programs
are not designed or intended for that type of use. However, even a graphics
intense page layout program (such as InDesign) doesn't provide the ability
to arbitrarily apply a border anywhere you please.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac