Increase Indent

[John]

Word 2003 Office SP2

I am seeing an unusual effect with Increase Indent.

On one paragraph, it says the style is Normal.
I click the Increase Indent and the formatting is now Normal + Left: 0.5
So far so good.

I go to another paragraph.
It says the style is Normal.
I click the Increase Indent and the formatting is now Normal.
Wait a minute. Why is the formatting still Normal?
It should say Normal + Left: 0.5
The paragraph did however indent by 0.5 inch, but
the formatting still says Normal instead of Normal + Left: 0.5

There are several paragraphs in the document that have this
unusual behavior. Even if I cut and paste them back saving
as text only. They still exhibit this behavior.

Any feedback is appreciated.

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

If the base style and direct formatting are identical, then you should be
seeing identical results in all cases. Do you get this in other documents as
well (e.g., a brand new document)? If not, then I would be inclined to
believe that this is some kind of document corruption. Alas, it happens far
too often.

To try to launder it: Save the file in .rtf format. Then close it. Then open
the .rtf file and re-save it in Word format (using a new name... just in
case something doesn't survive conversion). Then close it, and reopen the
just-created Word file. Does it still exhibit the same behavior?

 

[Klaus Linke]

One possible explanation are the new link styles (... a pet hate of mine):

If "Normal" is both a character style and a paragraph style, you never know
which of the two the styles pane (or the styles control) currently shows
you.

If it shows the paragraph style, it'll display which manual paragraph and
font formatting you have applied on top.
If it shows the character style, it'll only display which manual font
formatting you have applied on top.

When you have "Normal" applied both as paragraph style and character style,
it'll default to the second, I think.

It's the same with all (link) styles, and in Word 2007, "Normal", "Body
Text", the heading styles and more will be link styles by default.

:-( Klaus

 

[John]

I saved the document as a RTF and then saved it back as a DOC.
That had no effect.

In the Styles and Formatting panel, I looked at both the Available
Formatting and All Styles hoping to see Normal for both paragraph style and
character style. I only saw Normal for the paragraph style.

Any additional feedback is appreciated.

 

[John]

A new blank document works fine.
I click the Increase Indent and the formatting is now Normal + Left: 0.5
I click the Decrease Indent and the formatting is now Normal

The troubled document has some Normal paragraphs which Increase Indent as
Normal + Left: 0.5
while other Normal paragraphs Increase Indent as
Normal i.e. they tab over but the format remains as Normal

 

[Klaus Linke]

Hi John,

Do the paragraphs show the manual paragraph formatting after you select them
and use Ctrl+Spacebar (ResetFont, to remove the linked character style)?

I'm not 100% sure, but 95%.
You can't distinguish the Normal character (Char) style and the Normal
paragraph style in the styles pane.
The former will not show manual paragraph formatting.

I could probably fix the document with VBA -- though it does not always
work.
Once you have linked styles (Char styles), they are hard to get rid of.
Say even if you no longer have them applied, copying text (without the last
paragraph mark) to a clean doc will infect that formerly clean doc.

Basically in Word 2002/2003, there is not much you can do about the problem.

If you want, you can mail me the doc to (e-mail address removed), and I'll
check if the diagnosis is correct ;-)

Klaus

 

[John]

Klaus - Thank you for your valuable feedback.

Using Ctrl+Spacebar did not work.

However, after thinking about your suggestions, I did a Ctrl+A, Ctrl+X, and
Ctrl+V.
All of a sudden, everything was working i.e. the Increase and Decrease
Indent worked.
So now when I click the Increase Indent, the formatting is now Normal +
Left: 0.5

This was very good news. However, it made me think about what exactly the
Increase and Decrease Indent buttons really do, so I put it to the test.

I created a new blank document.
I created three paragraphs and gave them the style Normal.
I selected the three paragraphs.
I then clicked the Increase Indent button on them.
The style changed to Normal + Left: 0.5"
So it works as expected.

Next, I created three paragraphs and gave them the style List Bullet 3.
I selected the three paragraphs.
I then clicked the Increase Indent button on them.
I expected the style to change to List Bullet 3 + Left: 0.5" but
it remained as List Bullet 3 and moved the first line indent and left tab on
the ruler.
In effect, the List Bullet 3 acted the same way the Normal had when Normal
was not working properly with the Increase Indent.

Strange but true. Perhaps, you know what is going on.

Anyway, I appreciate you correcting the problem with the Normal style not
working with the Indent buttons.