Margins Outside Page

C

ChasGo

My 8-page document (8 1/2 x 11) has several sections
(including a small, two-column area), and a handful of
autoshapes, grouped and locked on each page. All of the
sections' margins are reasonable (e.g., 1.0", .5", etc.).
But no matter the section I'm in, whenever I even *enter*
Format>Page Setup, I get the following message: "Settings
you chose for the left and right margins, column spacing
or paragraph indents are too large for the page width in
some sections." My understanding of the message is that
the combined values of the margins exceed the dimensions
of the page.

At any rate, I get this message and I'm prevented from
making ANY changes *regardless* of the section I start
from. I've checked that the "apply to" drop down
shows "this section" (which I hoped would solve the
problem), and I've changed to different printers in case
there was some weirdness with the driver, etc. But all to
no avail.

I'm making all changes on the ruler bar, which it does let
me do (weirdly enough).

Anybody have ideas?

Thank you so much.
 
B

Beth Melton

It sounds like you have encountered a bug in the Columns command. Did
you at one time apply a two column format to the entire document and
change it back to a single column?

In any event to correct the issue you need to go to Format/Columns and
select "One" in the Presents section.

It may already reflect one column however when you click "One" in the
Presets section it will turn on the "Equal Column Width" option
(disabled) at the bottom of the dialog box. If this option is not
selected then Word is unable to automatically adjust the column width
when you change page margins and that is why you are encountering the
error message.

Note you may need to do this for every section.

--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/
 
C

ChasGo

Excellent!, thank you Beth.
-----Original Message-----
It sounds like you have encountered a bug in the Columns command. Did
you at one time apply a two column format to the entire document and
change it back to a single column?

In any event to correct the issue you need to go to Format/Columns and
select "One" in the Presents section.

It may already reflect one column however when you click "One" in the
Presets section it will turn on the "Equal Column Width" option
(disabled) at the bottom of the dialog box. If this option is not
selected then Word is unable to automatically adjust the column width
when you change page margins and that is why you are encountering the
error message.

Note you may need to do this for every section.

--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/





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Click to expand...
 
B

Beth Melton

You're welcome and I'm happy to hear the issue has been resolved.

FWIW they finally corrected this issue in Word 2003. If you use the
Columns command to return to a single column format the "Equal Column
Width' option is turn on.

You could still encounter the message if using a multiple column
layout. I would have preferred the "Equal Column Width" option to be
turned on whenever you use the Columns command on the toolbar but hey,
any correction to this bug is a step in the right direction. :)

--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/
 
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