How do I align content?

[WISEMANOFNARNIA]

I have a pamphlet that I scanned, and then I saved it as Word. I am
running into several problems. Every page seems to be one or more
textboxes (not frames), and I want each one to have the same margins
and be the same distance from top, left, etc. Are there some
gridlines I could use or some other method?
Secondly, sometimes I have to type content under or on top of the
textbox, when the scanning has been inadequate. But strange things
happen when I do that, text seems to be centered instead of left
justified, I don't know how to adjust the margins of the text (a basic
task) so that it aligns with the textboxes, and there are more
formatting problems.
I have Word 2000, so maybe future versions of Word don't have this
problem.
Is there any way to find out how to fix all this?
Thanks,
WMON

 

[JoAnn Paules]

Converting paper documents will never give you clean results. I would
suggest using Publisher but it's probably way too late for that.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If this is Word 2003 or earlier, display the Drawing toolbar and use Draw |
Grid: Display gridlines on screen. You can set the grid interval in that
dialog.

By "under or on top of the textbox," do you mean behind/in front of or
below/above? In either case, you'll need to use a separate ordinary (inline)
text paragraph with Left alignment. If you're trying to superimpose it on
the text box, you'll need to format the text box as Behind Text.

But I think I'd be more inclined to pull the text out of the text boxes,
edit as required, and format the pamphlet as needed.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Graham Mayor]

The problem is not that of Word but of your OCR software. Formatting with
text boxes is a common ploy, and makes future editing extremely difficult.
There is no shortcut to obtaining the results you want. If the OCR software
has an option to output to plain text, that would be my preferred start
point - or better OCR software!.

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>

 

[Terry Farrell]

I suggest Graham's solution - if it is an option - to scan as plain text and
then format the form yourself.

The alternative is to use the Convert Text Box to Frame command , then use
the Remove All Frames command.

A completely different approach is to insert the scanned IMAGE into the Page
Header and stretch it out to fit the page so as to match the original as
closely as possible. Then exit the header. You can now create a suitable
table and add Form Fields aligned to coincide with the data entry on the
form. Or if there are not too many entries, insert floating, borderless Text
Boxes anchored into Exact positions wrt to the Page corresponding to data
entry areas. The advantage now is that you can either print the form as a
whole from Word or if you exclude printing graphics, you can print onto
original forms.

Which you choose is down to how many times you are going to use the form
versus the effort in imitating the original form as a usable Word Form.