Microsoft Word technical issues

I'm not sure what keystroke combination you hit, but I can tell you that ctrl-x is for cutting (copying and deleting the original selected text) and ctrl-z is undo.

Probably a good idea for this topic to be moved to the Tech Help forum.
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=81

Barrett said:

. . . The cursor was automatically giving me a nice deep indent at the start of new parapgraphs and dialogues, now it isn't.
Any ideas?. . .

Click to expand...

Check the paragraph formatting -- see what the indents are, and fix as needed to match what was right before.

If you don't know about paragraph styles and formatting, then I'd recommend that you buy a good book about MS Word and learn.

It would probably be an easy fix if I were looking over your shoulder or doing it myself, but not easy otherwise.

--Ken

If you accidentally bumped the Tab key, it might indent everything after out of pure spite

Like RG said, check formatting of the problem paragraphs.

I think you hit ctrl-z. If you have Word set up to automatically indent your first line, hitting return and ctrl+z will remove the tab. Essentially, it has converted your return to return-tab and you deleted the tab. It then may or may not stay in this altered state. I've never been able to predict whether or not Word will remember these sorts of changes.

As others said, try your paragraph formatting. It is doubtless not as you want it to be.

More info?

Barrett,

It should be possible to figure this out.

In general, it is good always to give complete technical information when stating a problem:

Operating system (e.g., Windows XP, Vista, Macintosh).
Microsoft Word version (e.g., 2003).

Also, it sounds as if you were using a style that automatically indented the first line (just as if you had hit TAB).

If you do not know about styles, you can still do the following:

Right-click in a paragraph. Choose Paragraph... , then Indents and Spacing. Look at Special. Does it have an indentation specified, like 0.5"?

You can also click on the Main Menu on Format | Styles and Formatting to display the Styles window. This will tell you the name of the paragraph style.

Once you have the Styles window displayed, you can select one of the "bad" paragraphs (from first word through the last). Click Clear Formatting in the Styles window. Then click anywhere in the cleared paragraph and then click on the appropriate paragraph style. Does that get things back to normal? It may be that one paragraph got messed up somehow and each subsequent paragraph is just replicating the defective format.

If you want, you can send me a page of your manuscript, and I will see if I can figure it out. I usually can. Click on ComicBent and choose Send E-mail.

Sorry, no Mac or Word 2007 files, please. I run Windows XP.

At that moment I would have just done the undo thingy. It would have taken you back to what you just had.

Good luck. Sounds like a re-format is in order. I hate that.

I'm assuming that the beginning of the document has the original formatting when I say this:

Go to the beginning paragraphs of the document that have the correct formatting and then look at the formatting (look at the ruler and also go into format>paragraph and see what it's set too)

then go to where the formatting is wonky and set it to match what you just looked at, that should fix the problem (unless you reformatted the whole document)