All Knowledge is Contained in Fandom, Day-Job Edition

[rolanni]

So, over the summer I scored a new Mac at the day-job, which is not quite as satisfactory as it could be, since it came with the Monstrosity that is Microsoft Office-X. All of the bad things I thought and said about Microsoft Office 97? I take back. Pass the salt.

So, today's problem!

For some reason, the Big Blue Smurf think that single space means "space-anna-umpf," which not only is ugly, but *really* makes it hard to do things like, oh, merge labels. We here in the Control Cabin live and die by merging labels.

Now, I know I can go up into Format, choose Paragraph and turn Spacing After from 10 to 0. The trouble is, I seem to have to do this for EVERY FREAKING LABEL. Which is this case is only a couple hundred, but still -- every instinct rebels. Not to mention my wrists.

Anybody know how to turn this off Forever and Ever and A Day?

Abundant Spanish Aunts.

Comments

[jerusha.livejournal.com]

I *think* - based on my experience with Windoze based Offal - that you can either edit the "default template" or set a new default, which does not have the $!%$%^$ "add an extra space after each line that isn't in the line spacing menu, apparently expressly for the purpose of driving your customers out of their respective trees" <pant pant pant>

Right. Sorry. Anyway, try poking the default template with a stick.

Can you stick it?

[(Anonymous)]

Go into paragraph and fix your Spacing After to your preference, then click the "Default" button that should be on the bottom next to "Ok". It will warn you that you are changing the spacing on this document, do you want to make it the default on any document after this? Click yes.

Hopefully that fixes your issue.

Nathan
New Orleans

Re: Can you stick it?

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

That sounded good, except there isn't a Default button -- only OK and Cancel. Mac and PC are different in many strange ways...

[berneynator.livejournal.com]

I have a PC, and Office 2007, but I find that if I click on Paragraph on the home tab, there is a button at the bottom of the window ('Defaults') that allows you to change the default for a new document to whatever the settings you have on the current document are. So, you can click Spacing After to 0 and so on once, and have that apply to all new documents. Hope that helps!

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Alas, no default button here. Must be a Mac thing.

This might work . . .

[(Anonymous)]

Here's the only way I was able to find that worked with Mac office. I don't know whether this will work for what you're doing, but it should at least stop any new document you open from having that stupid formatting :P. Try going to "Format > Style". There should be a list of different styles, there should be a "normal" and "table normal". I don't know which could fix your problem, but this should work for both :S

Select the style to format and click "modify", in the window that pops up check the box that says "add to template" and select "paragraph" from the drop-down menu below it. this will open a new box that will allow you to set the paragraph spacing to 0. Once you've made the modifications, quit word and reopen, and the default document will be free of the doomish paragraph spacing.

I hope that works for you ^_^

Cheers,
Erica

Re: This might work . . .

[sb-moof.livejournal.com]

I just about finished writing up the exact same thing. Glad I saw that you beat me to it.

Re: This might work . . .

[sb-moof.livejournal.com]

You may also need to reduce the Window/Orphan control stuff, and click the Add to template checkbox

Re: This might work . . .

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

That did it.

Thank you so very much!

[muirecan.livejournal.com]

I found this which has two approaches you might use. http://www.officeformac.com/ms/.59bbd07a/0 The first one suggested is how to change the normal.dotm which is the default template used by Word X the second is a slightly different approach that also might work.

Office 2007 is a tough transition

[(Anonymous)]

We went through this at work last year on our windows boxes and it broke MANY things, MANY long time templates etc. The interface is very different and took a long time to get used to. What's worse, is that many people at work didn't have the hardware to run office 2007, so we are forever saving documents in "97-2003 compatible format". I asked IT why we upgraded and apparently MicroSoft wouldn't sell older office site licenses any longer, so the older licenses we do have are allocated to the older machines. People with boarder line machines were told to purchase more ram - not good for department budgets. - Diane Peters

Re: Office 2007 is a tough transition

[muirecan.livejournal.com]

Your IT department misunderstands Microsoft Policy. Yes Microsoft only sells licenses of their latest product and not earlier ones. But you are permitted to install the product you bought or any older one on that new license. This is because M$ got tired of trying to track licenses of Office 95, Office 97, Office 2000, Office XP, Office 2003, Office 2007, etc.. So starting with Office 2007 they stopped selling licenses of all the other versions of the same product and said you can install any older version than your current license on that license.

office

[(Anonymous)]

You have to be careful about the version of office you use. newer windows versions won't run some of the older office versions.