Trivial Questions

[Tom Robertson]

I can live without fixing these problems, but why, when cutting and
pasting from one word document to another, does the font sometimes
change? Does all text have an apparent font and another underlying
font?

Why does the "-" symbol lengthen (I believe when I press "enter" to go
to the next line, at least) sometimes? It's about twice as long.
After my file is large and I want all the "-" symbols to be the same
size, I have to cut and paste the longer "-" symbol into the "find and
replace" tool and it sometimes makes hundreds of replacements.

And why, when I press "enter" to go to the next line, does the left
margin on the line on which I press "enter" move to the right, so that
I have to go back and delete text to get the margin back to what it
was?

I'm using version 9.0.2720

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi Tom,

Answers in-line below...

I can live without fixing these problems, but why, when cutting and
pasting from one word document to another, does the font sometimes
change? Does all text have an apparent font and another underlying
font?

No, there is no "apparent" vs. "underlying" font. You're having
trouble with conflicting style definitions in the two documents. See
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/FormatOfTextChanges.html for
explanation.

Why does the "-" symbol lengthen (I believe when I press "enter" to go
to the next line, at least) sometimes? It's about twice as long.
After my file is large and I want all the "-" symbols to be the same
size, I have to cut and paste the longer "-" symbol into the "find and
replace" tool and it sometimes makes hundreds of replacements.

You're probably getting zapped by Word's AutoFormat As You Type
(sometimes known by users as "Auto Screw Up"). See
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/TameAutoFormat.htm for this
and other annoyances you can turn off. The long dash may be an "en
dash" (character 0150) or an "em dash" (character 0151); see
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/InsertSpecChars.htm.

And why, when I press "enter" to go to the next line, does the left
margin on the line on which I press "enter" move to the right, so that
I have to go back and delete text to get the margin back to what it
was?

That one doesn't sound familiar, and it isn't normal behavior. When
you go back to the line with the indent, does it show a different
style name in the toolbar than it had before you hit Enter? Are there
actual characters at the start of the line, or is it a paragraph
indent?

 

[Guest]

Tom,

Immediately after you paste the test, and only immediately after you
paste the text, a little clipboard appears at the end. If you click that,
you may choose "match destination formatting". I feel your pain, and wish we
could set the default.

As for the changing of the left margin after "enter", it sounds like
you are "auto-setting indent" for a paragraph style. Do you get a little
underline and a lightening bolt when you hover over the change? Click that,
and it will give you an option to "stop automatically creating indents".