I am working on a fairly large document (3,000 pages). It is OCR'd from some scanned information I have, so I've been needing to clean it up a bit.

I've noticed that sometimes when I hit return the word disappears off to the left of the margin on the next line. I need to hit the Tab button a couple of times to push it back into the right place.

Hopefully this makes sense. A screenshot tells 1000 words, so they say. I have shown what the text looks like and what my layout settings are in the below screenshots.

Attached Images

	Chamberlain screenshot - text off line.jpg (84.1 KB, 13 views)
	Chamberlain screenshot - text off line layout tab.jpg (38.4 KB, 13 views)

Check the left indent setting in the paragraph formatting.

If it is a negative (-) setting it is to the left of the margin.

Thanks for the thoughts, but I don't think that is it. I uploaded with my query a screenshot of the paragraph formatting from the layout tab.

Here is what I get when I open the full paragraph settings (see attachment)

Attached Images

Chamberlain screenshot - paragraph setting.jpg (49.4 KB, 13 views)

Yeah, nah! You need to post the actual document rather than screenshots if you want a simple answer, otherwise we need to guess at what is going on and talk back and forth to zero in on the issue.

The paragraph settings you are showing in your screen shots doesn't reflect the settings on the paragraph which has extended to the left. That paragraph in particular has a hanging indent which is not shown in that dialog screenshot. We also can't see the page margins, the ruler or page setup in your screenshots.

Firstly, try selecting all that text and apply a different style to it - I would choose Normal or Body Text. If that doesn't change the alignment, click on it and see if there is a frame that appears around it. If you click to the left of the second line, does a frame appear showing that there might be a white object sitting there?

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

Thanks for your response Guessed. I have pasted part of the document into a Word (docx file) which I have attached to this message.

I have been working on it as an .RTF file, but hopefully it doesn't make much difference. Unfortunately there is no option in this forum to upload it as an .RTF.

I took your advice and selected all the copy and changed it to Body style. Unfortunately it stripped the document of much of the formatting (see attached image), which I didn't want to lose.

Thanks again for all your efforts to help me, which are appreciated.

Attached Images

Chamberlain screenshot - paragraph setting2.jpg (192.7 KB, 14 views)

Attached Files

Pasted document with indent.docx (12.2 KB, 2 views)

In your sample document, one paragraph (the one with the narrowest spacing on the left hand side) has a negative left indent (and also a hanging indent specified). See the attached screen shot.

Attached Images

indentedText.png (55.3 KB, 13 views)

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Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

These settings can be different in every paragraph. Learn to use styles for your formatting to maintain consistency in the way text of the same type is formatted.
The Importance of Styles in Microsoft Word

Thanks Stefan. It is odd that some paragraphs have the negative indent. It must be a product of the OCR.

Is there a way you know of that I can fix it for the entire document without losing my formating?

I agree that the OCR process is a likely cause of these inconsistencies. OCR output may look OK, but it often is not formatted in the best way possible.

You can select all the content with Ctrl+A and then change the indent for all the text using the Paragraph dialog box. Whether that is efficient in practice will depend on the rest of the document. Maybe some settings actually need to be different in different text ranges.

Note that for a large selection, the Paragraph dialog box (as any dialog box in Word that reflects formatting in the document) will indicate that some options are "undefined." This just means that Word can't tell if they are the same for all paragraphs in the selection. See the screen shot for an example.

Attached Images

blankDialogBox.jpg (154.4 KB, 7 views)

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional