Margins Problems

[Barbee]

Here is my problem. The first 3 pages of my document are perfect, that's the margins I want throughout, but I get to page 4 and they are all huge. How can I fix that?

[Charles Kenyon]

There is a section break here.
Sections / Headers and Footers in Microsoft Word 2007-2013
There may be a change in orientation rather than in the margins.

Copy the settings from the first section into the second one through the page setup dialog.

[Barbee]

OK I've seen that menu... how can I get to it?

[JimP]

From the "Page Layout" ribbon click on the small downward arrow of the "Page Setup" section (lower right-hand corner).

[Charles Kenyon]

You can also call up this dialog by double-clicking in the Ruler. You want to make sure that you are making the settings the same in the two sections. Likewise, you need to copy the content of the headers or footers. Once you have them the same, if there is no reason for the section break, you can delete the section break. (When you delete a section break, the settings of the section past the section break become the settings for the earlier text.)

Experiment with a copy of your document. Once you have it like you want it, you can save the document under the original name.

It will make editing easier if you display non-printing formatting marks. Showing non-printing formatting marks in Microsoft Word

[Barbee]

It didn't work. Maybe because the document was pasted from another program???? Maybe if I explain what I'm doing it would help.
I am an author. I wrote a book years ago and have obtained the rights but the only copy I had was a paperback. I had it scanned to WORD at Office Depot. I'm turning it into an ebook. However, the copy is all over the place. Bad indenting if any, paragraph irregularities.... a mess. I'm trying to fix it. I liked the format of the last one I did so I copied and pasted the document into the old setup. But only the first two pages kept the margins.

[Charles Kenyon]

Well, you have a problem.
Converted text often has multiple unnecessary section breaks. Conversion software often uses section breaks to change indents.

Your best bet is to save as a .txt file and then bring it back into Word with copy and paste. You will need to take out extraneous text from headers and footers (page numbers) and extra paragraph marks and then reformat everything. This may be easier than retyping the manuscript.

[Barbee]

OK... In the older version of Word they had a feature where you could see the breaks and headers and footers. Does 13 have that? If it does I haven't found it. I'm new to 2013, the last Word I used was 01 or 03.

[JimP]

Originally Posted by Barbee

In the older version of Word they had a feature where you could see the breaks and headers and footers. Does 13 have that?

Charles Kenyons post above (#5) provided a link to display non-printing formatting marks (spacing, page breaks, et al). Here it is again: Showing non-printing formatting marks in Microsoft Word. You should be able to "see" the headers/footers, but if you are trying to "access" them simply double-click in the header/footer area of the page.

[Barbee]

Thank you all for your help. This is a hair pulling job. Much appreciated. My son, who lives a few hundred miles away, took a look at it and he said the problem is that each sentence begins with a new paragraph. Anyway to clean that up? Must have happened in the conversion.

[Charles Kenyon]

Yes. But it depends on what you mean by each sentence starts a new paragraph.

Take a copy of your document.

Press Ctrl+H to get the Replace dialog.

In the find box type ^p.
In the replace with box, press the space bar once.

Press Replace All.

You now have a document with no paragraph divisions.

This is probably not what you want but may give you some ideas.

Is there some way to tell when you have a real paragraph break?

[Barbee]

What I'm doing now is cutting and pasting from the PDF. I click the paragraph icon P and all the paragraph breaks are showing. The paperback had justified right margins so I have to go through every page (184) and remove breaks and add in some places. It's a job but still easier than retyping.

[Charles Kenyon]

Try going through and simply adding something like XYXYXY where you want a real end of paragraph. Then do the replace I suggested.

Then replace XYXYXY with ^p

That may give you some extra spaces.

[Barbee]

At each instance?

[Charles Kenyon]

You use the replace dialog (Ctrl+H) and then click on Replace All.