Hi all!
I'm an author and decided to create an anthology of numerous novelettes, short stories, and flash fiction that I've written.
A couple of the stories that i'm adding are older and were written when I had Word 2003. I now have Word 2016. (This is on my computer, not online)


The paragraph settings that I'm using for my stories now are a bit different from the ones I used in the past.
When I try to change the paragraph settings on the old stories, it just doesn't work. The paragraph settings come up, I enter the formatting I want, but when I hit enter, nothing happens. The old formatting remains in place.
Not sure why this is happening. How do I address it?

Thanks!

Please put your second question as a separate post.

Paragraph formatting is not a document setting, it is paragraph by paragraph. The best thing to do is to create or modify a paragraph style that does the formatting you want and apply it to all the body text in your document.
Importance of Styles in Word

Well, Charles,
This was how I was taught to do it:
When I'm in the document and select the entire thing, then type "paragraph" in the box where it asks what you want to do, "Paragraph Settings" comes up.
I fill in all the boxes teling it I want it to do.
Under General:
Alignmen:t Left
Outline level: Body Text
INDENTATION:
Under "special" I choose First Line
By: 0.2"
Under Spacing:
Before: 6 pts
After: 6 pt
Line Spacing: Single
Maybe that's considered incorrect, but normally it works quite well.
However, the document I'm bring in that was in Word 2003 won't let me change it.
(and this is the formatting requested by Kindle Direct Publishing (Amazon KD)

Which part of the formatting is not changing? Perhaps if you post a small sample document that demonstrates your issue we can suggest the quickest fix.

__________________
Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

How to attach a screenshot or file in this forum.
Note: attach a Word file with the problem, not a screenshot.

If the document doesn't respond to paragraph formatting changes, maybe what appears to be multiple paragraphs really isn't. Use the Find & Replace dialog box and replace ^013 with ^p.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional