Word 2003 document with text orientation issue

[Luke Williams]

Hi,

Word 2003

I received a document where the page orientation is portrait. The text
inside is read not from left to right but from top to bottom. IT's as if the
texte was in a box and its was rotated 90 degrees. But the text, the whole
document, is not in a box or a table. The only way to recreate a normal
document is to copy the text, open a new document and paste it. Then it's
fine. Why is the text orientation wrong?

Thanks,

L.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Is it definitely text and not an image of some text (i.e. can you edit the
text?)

If it is text, it could have been created on a copy of Word set up for
editing in Oriental languages such as Chinese - if you choose vertical
layout, that's how text in "latin" character sets looks.

You only get to see the options for that in File->Page Setup if you have one
of the relevant languages (e.g. Chinese, Simplified) in Microsoft Office
2003 Language Settings, but if that is the problem, you should be able to
fix it in VBA without enabling such a language - e.g.,
- open the document
- Word Tools->Macro->Visual basic Editor... to open the VBA Editor
- If the Immediate Window is not displayed, press ctrl-G
- type the following text
ActiveDocument.Content.Orientation = wdTextOrientationHorizontal
- press enter

If that's not it, I have no idea what it is!

 

[Luke Williams]

Thanks. That worked.

Is it definitely text and not an image of some text (i.e. can you edit the
text?)

If it is text, it could have been created on a copy of Word set up for
editing in Oriental languages such as Chinese - if you choose vertical
layout, that's how text in "latin" character sets looks.

You only get to see the options for that in File->Page Setup if you have one
of the relevant languages (e.g. Chinese, Simplified) in Microsoft Office
2003 Language Settings, but if that is the problem, you should be able to
fix it in VBA without enabling such a language - e.g.,
- open the document
- Word Tools->Macro->Visual basic Editor... to open the VBA Editor
- If the Immediate Window is not displayed, press ctrl-G
- type the following text
ActiveDocument.Content.Orientation = wdTextOrientationHorizontal
- press enter

If that's not it, I have no idea what it is!