[SOLVED] MS Word issue

[GTP]

[SOLVED]

Got a question from a client today.

"I’ve got an issue with formatting in Word documents which I’ve never had before and wonder if I’ve touched some keys without knowing about it that have caused this.


When using dot points I used to be able to press enter at the end of a line then when the next dot point appears I could just use the tab key and it would indent the next dot point at the next indented level which is what I wanted.


I could then at the end of that line press enter then shift tab to take me back to the main dot point.


I can’t do either of these anymore nor can I put Ctrl T at the beginning of a line to keep the whole paragraph indented."

Seeing as I'm useless at MS Word, I posted here hoping someone will be able to help.
Thanks in advance.

 

[carmen617]

Got a question from a client today.

"I’ve got an issue with formatting in Word documents which I’ve never had before and wonder if I’ve touched some keys without knowing about it that have caused this.


When using dot points I used to be able to press enter at the end of a line then when the next dot point appears I could just use the tab key and it would indent the next dot point at the next indented level which is what I wanted.


I could then at the end of that line press enter then shift tab to take me back to the main dot point.


I can’t do either of these anymore nor can I put Ctrl T at the beginning of a line to keep the whole paragraph indented."

Seeing as I'm useless at MS Word, I posted here hoping someone will be able to help.
Thanks in advance.

Not an expert either but sounds like he messed up his tabs. Have him reset his normal template.

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/restore-ms-office-normal-template-63456.html

Also, a quick repair on Office won't hurt.

 

[HCHTech]

I've been using Word for, oh, I don't know - whenever WordPerfect lost the war - 30 some-odd-years, and I've never heard of a "dot point". Are they talking about some kind of visual indication of a space (Remember Wordstar?) ? Do they mean "Bullet Points"? Is this just an Australian thing?

 

[Sky-Knight]

I do not consider myself an expert, but I've been using Word since version 2.0...

@HCHTech It's the show formatting button... it's essential to know about.

https://support.office.com/en-us/ar...-in-word-84a53213-5d02-404a-b022-09cae1a3958b

It makes all the white space actors in Word visible, so you can see where extra tabs, spaces, carriage returns, and the like are mucking up the formatting. You don't need it often, but when you need it, you NEED it. In this case there is likely something just before the user is stuffing in the list that's mucking things up. Or, the user isn't actually adding to a list and thinks he is, either way that button will reveal it.

@Barcelona

Then there's the tab behavior itself, it changed but I can't recall exactly when. Every time you press enter, you're starting a NEW paragraph. If you want the indent to hold, the solution is to not push enter, and let it wrap itself. Every time you press enter with show formatting enabled, you'll see this: ¶ That means a new paragraph is starting here, and yes if you want it tabbed over you have to tab it over.

The tab to go right, and shift tab to go left thing does still work, but only in lists, bullet list, numbered list, or multi-leveled list. They are located in the paragraph section of the home tab on the ribbon. Click the button, get the first element, tab over, shift-tab back. That's how those work!

If you have a section with special formatting, you need to define that section and apply the appropriate style to it for it to maintain it. Modern word processing is more like writing a webpage than using a typewriter.

 

[HCHTech]

It's the show formatting button...

Yes, I know about that, but I've never heard the term "dot points", that's all. I haven't checked in a long time, but this topic made me look - I see it still doesn't have all of the formatting like Bold on and Bold off, for example. Now I miss 'Reveal Codes' in Wordperfect again - Dammit!

 

[Sky-Knight]

Yes, I know about that, but I've never heard the term "dot points", that's all. I haven't checked in a long time, but this topic made me look - I see it still doesn't have all of the formatting like Bold on and Bold off, for example. Now I miss 'Reveal Codes' in Wordperfect again - Dammit!

You'd love this thing then: https://www.latex-project.org/

But yeah, I'm assuming the user is trying to edit a bullet list and failing gloriously.

 

[britechguy]

I've been using Word for, oh, I don't know - whenever WordPerfect lost the war - 30 some-odd-years, and I've never heard of a "dot point". Are they talking about some kind of visual indication of a space (Remember Wordstar?) ? Do they mean "Bullet Points"? Is this just an Australian thing?

To me, this sounds like a discussion of a bulleted list on the part of the original questioner.

When I'm using a bulleted list it behaves exactly as described in the "before" scenario. I would presume that they've accidentally reset something about bulleted list settings.

They should check to see if the odd behavior occurs if they create a new blank document, or whether it's limited to the problem document. Once that's known, I can propose certain fixes.

 

[GTP]

Hey guys thank you for the valuable advice and answers. Very much appreciated.
The client has somehow managed to fix it themselves.
Thanks again and the problem has been solved.

 

[HCHTech]

You'd love this thing then: https://www.latex-project.org/

OMG, Latex. If I never see that again, it will be too soon. I once helped a dear friend of mine put a paper in Latex for submission to a scientific journal. Backstory alert: This was a woman in her 80's who was a phenomenal pianist, and I believe only had an undergraduate degree. Believe it or not, she had a surprisingly well thought out "theory of the universe" that she had been working on for much of her life. One of her "bucket list" items was to submit her paper to a scientific journal. I vowed to help her with that, and it was several frustrating hours of work to get charts formatted correctly, draft a summary and fix countless things to conform to the submission rules and get the thing submitted. It was rejected, of course, which I knew was going to be the outcome, but she seemed happy that we had gone through the process.

Fun story, she managed somehow to wrangle an audience with none other than Richard Feynman back in the 70's to discuss her ideas!

Pedantic edit: "LaTex" is more correct.

 

[Markverhyden]

You'd love this thing then: https://www.latex-project.org/

Ahh.... The good old days. LOL!!!!

I remember when I ran into it's predecessor, TeX. Mid to late 80's. Several of us doing training for all the stuff they offered. Very complex, lots of scientific equations, etc, etc. Management was complaining about how sloppy our hand written, photocopied stuff looked. Engineering produced slick looking documents using TeX on a VAX 11/780. So they sent me an another to Houston so we could learn it all. At the end of the first day our minds were totally numb trying to absorb all that crazy syntax and structure.

Fortunately, while wondering around, we happened to notice a new shipment of Mac's that had come in. I'd worked on the VP's Lisa before so was familiar enough. Could basically do everything the same but in a GUI. Just no laser printer, only Image Writer then but still looked really good. Wasted no time in called the boss to tell him about the new Mac's. He could spend 300-400k for the DEC setup or just 10k, with almost no training, on the Mac's. Dodged that bullet. Pun intended.

 

[britechguy]

OMG, Latex. If I never see that again, it will be too soon.

You and me both!! (And, even though it's not related, I can say the same for the LISP programming language.)

 

[britechguy]

LISP? Ha! Try FSM code in C generated by a PROLOG program written by someone who left the company two years previously and took the documentation with them.

I believe I've just unknowingly covered this in its entirety in my response to you on the if/elseif topic.