Blank Area at the top of the page

[Laurence]

I am in Word 2007.

I have a document with a header.
The header has a table in it, at the bottom
of the header.
Underneath the table in the header is a large blank area.
How do I get rid of the blank area?

I guess I want to resize the header vertically,
make it smaller vertically so that I can eliminate
the blank area, but can't seem to find out how to do that.

I looked at the header properties etc...
there doesn't seem to be anything in the blank area.

Thanks in Advance,

Laurence

 

[Lene Fredborg]

There must always be at least one paragraph below a table (you cannot delete
the last paragraph mark). This is also true for tables in a header.

There are a couple of things to check:

Check whether the top margin is larger than needed (set via Page Setup).

Check whether you have a number of empty paragraphs below the table – press
Ctrl+Shift+8 to turn on non-printing characters so that you can see the
paragraph marks (¶). Delete any superfluous paragraphs.

If you have only one paragraph mark below the table, you can set the line
spacing to "Exactly" with a small value (around 0,7 pt is the smallest
accepted amount). Also make sure that space before and after are set to 0.
All this can be set via the Paragraph dialog box.

I have Word 2003 and cannot tell you exactly how to find the dialog boxes
mentioned above in Word 2007.

--
Regards
Lene Fredborg
DocTools - Denmark
www.thedoctools.com
Document automation - add-ins, macros and templates for Microsoft Word

 

[Terry Farrell]

To add to Lene's reply. If it is the 'trailing' paragraph mark that all
tables need, you can also select it and apply the hidden attribute. It will
still be visible when you have the non-printing characters displayed, but as
soon as you toggle of non-printing characters, the hidden paragraph will
disappear.

 

[Lene Fredborg]

I also first included info about setting the paragraph to hidden, but I
decided to leave it out because it will cause the pages to break in different
places when you turn on and off non-printing characters. I thought this may
lead to confusion but I may be wrong.

Also, I was confused by my own settings. I forgot that I had "Hidden text"
turned on in Options > View tab. This means that hidden text will still be
visible/occupy space even if you turn off the "Show/Hide" button.

--
Regards
Lene Fredborg
DocTools - Denmark
www.thedoctools.com
Document automation - add-ins, macros and templates for Microsoft Word

 

[Terry Farrell]

That's true and can be very distracting with long documents. I usually
minimise the effect by setting it to 1 pt and then hiding it. That is
usually a good compromise for me.

Terry