Word 2000 [copying segments from Word Help to a Word document]

Using Word 2000, I often copy and paste segments of the Help column to Word for future use.

The copies may only fill half a page. Is there a command available to highlight that particular section and have it fill the whole page? I hope I've made myself clear.

As of now I place the cursor at the beginning of the second line, hit the backspace key to have it *fill* a sentence of the first line.

 

Hi, Trident.

I tried to reproduce your problem with Word 2003. Unfortunately, when I pasted the contents of Word's "Help" column into a Word 2003 document, the lines spanned all the way across the page.

I'm guessing your lines in Word 2000 do not span all the way across the page and sometimes cause you to use more than one sheet of paper when you print, for example.

Perhaps you can highlight all of your pasted contents (using Ctrl-A) and then change the format of your Word document to two or three columns to conserve paper or view more information on a single screen.

 

Hello, mailman, sorry being late in responding, but I was away for a while.

You answered; "Perhaps you can highlight all of your pasted contents (using Ctrl-A) and then change the format of your Word document to two or three columns to conserve paper or view more information on a single screen ".

My intent is to span the whole page as your '2003' does. Guess I'll probably do it the way I've done, although it does take some time. Thanks for the suggestion and Happy Holidays!

 

Hello Trident, I have Word 2000 and I did what you are trying to do and when I pasted a selection from Help into Word it spanned the whole page from margin to margin. Check your Page Setup and see what the margin settings are. The default is Right 1.25" and Left 1.25 ". Another thing to check is under Format>Columns, on the default normal template there should only be the single column selected. If somehow a two column format was selected that could account for the text not spanning the page. You wouldn't notice anything until you pasted enough text to populate the second column on the page.

One other thing that may help is turn the "Ruler" on if not already on,(View>Ruler). This will put a "ruler at the top of the page and show you what your margins are set at. (See attached jpg. of a page with "help" text pasted in)

 

Thanks, JohnB, also mailman; Guess I'm at fault for not being specific. The "Help" section I copied was FireFox2 (copying this for a friend who is using FF, but does not have a printer).

(Have either of you tried a copy and paste from any part of FF Help - curious as to whether it is my setup?)

"Help" in other programs seems to work fine.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

 

Hi, Trident.

Thanks for clarifying.

On my machine, pasting FF 2.0's "Help" does reproduce your issue in Word 2003 as you described for Word 2000 (I think).

• I pasted a FF 2.0 "Help" section into a Word 2003 document.
• Then I clicked on Word's Format > AutoFormat...

It wasn't perfect, but it took care of a some of the formatting issue you are referring to (I think). Although AutoFormat didn't do a perfect job combining two lines into one as you have done manually, it changed the font size to match my margins and even automatically created bold "header" fonts for many subsection titles.

There are several options available via the AutoFormat window dialogs you may want to experiment with.

 

Hi, mailman; That *Auto-Format* did it! Spanned the text to the margins set and the font was as I had set it up.

Thank you again!

 

Hi again Trident: You comments re Firefox helps clear it up somewhat. I did a copy and paste from FF help to Word and got the same results as you. The problem is that the FF help text has "hard returns" at the end of each line within a paragraph. (With formating marks turned on in Word a hard return looks like a backwards P in the "unformat.jpg picture below).

I also used "Autoformat" as mailman suggested and it removes the hard returns for each line in a paragraph and allows the text to stretch over the full width of the document between the margins. (See "autoformat.jpg" below). So it looks like mailman's suggestion should work.

To see the formating marks in Word go to Tools>Options> and click on the "All" box under the "Formatting marks" section.

Hope this helps you.

 

Hi again, looks like you and I were posting at the same time. Glad that has worked out for you.

 

That's GREAT news, Trident! You're very welcome.

Now I can go shopping knowing I have succeeded in helping someone at Windows BBS today. It'll help me deal with the crowds.

EDIT: BTW, Trident and John, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you too!