Hi JimP
When I open your document in my version of Word it clearly shows a 24pt space between Line 2 and 3.
You may have a corrupt template somehow.
Tony

Hi Jim P,

Your example is exactly what I expected, ie. a 24 point space between Line 2 and Line 3. What I got was no space between Line 2 and Line 3. Thus either I am doing something wrong or there is something wrong with my Word2010. I tried both making the before and after paragraph setting and then creating the sample, and also creating the sample, highlighting it, and then changing the after paragraph setting.

Before making the somewhat scary step, with some relearning, of deleting Word2010 and reinstalling it from the original disk, I wanted to explore any other possibilities. The Office 2010 disks came from the IT department at California State University - Fullerton a couple years ago and, up to now, have behaved as expected - tho I use only a few features. Altho they supplied the disks they state that they will not support them except for students - and I am in their senior program.

I did it the quick and dirty way (highlighed ALL of the text, set the parameters from the paragraph Indents and Spacing menu).

Another way, and probably the perferred way, is using Styles (setting all of your text to the same style and modifying that style to your indents and spacing parameters...again, using 0 before and 24 after).

Hi Jim P,

>I did it the quick and dirty way (highlighed ALL of the text, set the parameters from the paragraph Indents and Spacing menu).<

I did the same, adding turning on "show symbols" which showed the pilcrows at the end of each "paragraph" and the carriage return symbols at the ends of the short lines within "paragraphs". Then changed the "After" paragraph spacing - and nothing changed. That is why I'm wondering if my Word2010 is working correctly - tho I'm certainly capable of making some dumb mistake.

Could some other setting, tho I've tried various, like line spacing, font or font size make a difference? I'm using 8 point character height and Arial Narrow to get high info density on a pocket size trip schedule. Trip starts in two days and I don't expect to be in contact for two weeks.

Do not uninstall Word 2010 and reinstall. This will not make matters better.

Try renaming your normal.dotm template to normalold.dotm with Word closed and reopening Word. Then open your document and see what you get. If this works, something in your normal template is corrupted or broken. If it doesn't, close Word and delete the new normal.dotm template and rename normalold.dotm to normal.dot. (That will put you back where you started.)

You will find your normal template in your user templates folder. The default location for that in XP is
C:\Documents and Settings\ user name \Application Data\Microsoft\Templates