Space in a Word Document

PamW 26 Reputation points
2021-03-22T21:52:35.19+00:00

I have a large space between paragraphs that I cannot delete. It is not a page break and there is no graphic. I have highlighted and cannot see any issues under line and page breaks. HELP!

Word Management
Word Management
Word: A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
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  1. Erin Ding-MSFT 4,456 Reputation points
    2021-03-23T09:42:35.447+00:00

    Hi @PamW ,

    According to your description, I have the 3 questions as below.

    1. How did you get the document? Downloaded from the web or created by others? It would be better to provide a screenshot of “a large space”.
    2. Does the issue only occurr in an individual document? If yes, you could copy the document to other PCs to check the issue.
    3. Does this issue occur before?

    You could refer to the following to check this issue.

    1. Please make a backup for the document firstly.
    2. Press Ctrl + A to select all content, in Home>Font, click the icon in the lower right corner, make sure to uncheck Hidden.
      80539-1.png
    3. Please go to Layout>Page Setup, click the icon in the lower right corner, in Layout tab, please set Vertical alignment to Top.
      80612-2.png
    4. Select the context of the blank area, go to Home>Paragraph to check if Spacing and Line Space in Indents and Spacing tab is appropriate. And make sure to uncheck Window/Orphan control in Line and Page Breaks tab.
      80614-3.png
      80615-4.png
    5. Besides, you could try go to View>select Outline in the Views tab, and select All Levels in the Show Level drop-down. This behavior will show you the detailed content and format outline of the document. If there is a blank space in here, you could delete it appropriately to check the issue.
      80457-5.png
    6. Double-click the blank area to see if there is a text box. If yes, you could delete it to check the issue.

    Hope the information is helpful to you. Any updates, please let me know.

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    1 person found this answer helpful.

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  1. Stefan Blom 2,061 Reputation points MVP
    2021-03-24T15:28:40.243+00:00

    "Excessive" spacing between paragraphs could be caused by the setting for Spacing Before and/or Spacing After (Paragraph dialog box). Or maybe one or more text paragraphs is defined as "Keep lines together" or "Keep with next." You can upload a sample here for us to look at.

    1 person found this answer helpful.
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  2. Charles Kenyon 2,561 Reputation points
    2021-03-26T01:48:16.77+00:00

    As Stefan said, this can be caused by paragraph formatting. The variations are explored in Suzanne Barnhill's Improving the Bottom Line

    1 person found this answer helpful.
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  3. PamW 26 Reputation points
    2021-03-31T21:27:43.7+00:00

    I solved the mystery. The page formatting was set up by another to "justify" the page vertically. Thanks to all for your efforts.

    1 person found this answer helpful.