How to change text line length to fill in wider margin templates?

[terikso]

I have a 150 page document that is an OCR scan of a typed document and was
saved in Word. That saved document has line lengths of only six or seven
words and maybe five inches at the widest. I think I have looked through all
the related Help items for Style, Format, and Margins, but found no help.

I want to change the document so that the line lengths/widths become
longer/normal and at the same time preserve the paragraph breaks and indent.
Or perhaps copy the current text and paste it into a format that "forces"
such a change on the pasted text.

I am using Word 2007 in Vista. Help!

 

[Jay Freedman]

The OCR program may have placed the text inside text boxes or frames, or it may
have ended each line with a paragraph mark.

The paragraph marks are the easiest to deal with, so investigate that first.
Click the ¶ button on the Home tab and look for that symbol at the end of each
line. If it's there, use the Replace command as described at
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/CleanWebText.htm.

If instead you click in the text and you see a box around the text, right-click
the edge of the box and look at the bottom of the popup menu. If it says Format
Frame, you can click that and click the Remove Frame button at the bottom left
of the dialog. If you're really lucky, the text will drop into the correct place
as plain text; if not, the text will be dropped somewhere else on the page and
will have to be dragged or cut/pasted to the right place.

If the bottom of the popup menu says Format Text Box, click that, go to the Text
Box tab of the dialog, and click the Convert to Frame button. Then you can go
through the steps listed above to remove the frame.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
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