Word overrides my line spacing settings.

S

Scribe

One of my biggest frustrations with Word is when I make formatting changes I
get rediculous results from scrambling my document to simply not doing
anything. I am trying to change the line spacing at the beginning of a
paragraph to match the spacing on other paragraphs and Word WILL NOT DO IT. I
have tried every line spacing from 3 pt to 1500 and the result is exactly the
same. Nothing! Any suggestions?
 
F

fumei via OfficeKB.com

A very simple answer, and one that will make Word behave much much much
better.

Use Styles.

In other words, do not DO formatting changes. Make the format you desire
into explicit Styles, and use them.

Specifically though, I am not quite following:

"I am trying to change the line spacing at the beginning of a paragraph to
match the spacing on other paragraphs"

If you use the same Style, they would ALWAYS match. However, are you saying
you you want the first line of a paragraph to be different from the other
lines of a paragraph?? I am not sure that is possible.
 
S

Scribe

Thank you for the reply and I will try your suggestion. I am certain that
some of my troubles I am having are a result of what you have pointed out;
trying to do things the way I want, instead of the way Word was designed.

In this particular case the first line of the first page had the spacing
before the first line at 18 pt. Although the first line on the second page
was also set at 18 pt. before, it was stuck in a different spacing (I'm
guessing 10 pt. which is what the text was.) If I changed it to 0 pt. or 72
pt. it had no effect.

What I did to get it at the same spacing as the first page (18 pt. before)
was to insert a page break and then it adjusted the spacing on the first line
of the second page to the same spacing as the first line of the second page
(they looked the same with the same settings instead of looking different at
the same settings).

Please feel free to let me know if this shines any light or just confuses
things. Thank you again for your feedback!
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

Spacing Before is always suppressed at the top of a page except the first
page of a document or section. If you want to retain the Spacing Before (as
you discovered), you have to insert a page or section break or format the
paragraph as "Page break before."
 
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