[thechat] MS Word formatting insanity

[Syed Zeeshan Haider]

From: "Joel D Canfield"


>> Just a thought: Did you disable "Link to Previous" button on
>> "Header and
>> Footer" toolbar.
>
> Well, it's not the headers and footers that are doing this. The purpose
> of separate sections is to allow for different headers and footers for
> each, but the problem I'm having is with the text itself.

I tried to recreate the problem in a Word file and have failed to do so. 
Seems to me you have unknowingly altered some settings which are not easy to 
guess (many setting can be altered by just a few wrong keyboard shortcuts). 
However, the second thing that comes to mind is that Word has corrupted the 
file (which is not uncommon for Word, at least in my experience).

A rather crude way of dealing with a seemingly impossible Word file, which I 
often use when someone sends me one riddled with peculiarities to work on, 
is to select all text, except TOC (if created by using Insert menu) and 
paste it in a fresh, new, blank Word file. I would use Paste as text from 
Paste special. It would take some time to reformat the new file but if it's 
not a couple hundred pages with a lot of  unrelated formatting settings, it 
wouldn't take me more than half an hour.
--
Syed Zeeshan Haider