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Double spacing is too wide, looks triple or quadruple space

Anonymous
2020-01-21T01:49:04+00:00

Hello,

I have a document that should be double-spaced. Most of it is, but there are sections where the double spacing is way too wide and looks triple or quadruple spaced.  Here's what I've tried:

  1. Selecting the text and make it single spaced. This didn't work, it looks sort of double spaced but my publisher's editor doesn't allow this approach for formatting.
  2. In Paragraph menu, I tried selecting "Don't add space to paragraphs of the same style." That did nothing.
  3.  Export document into Google Docs and then reimport into MS Word. This looked good in Google Docs, but the problem returned when I reimported it into Word.
  4.  Export document into Pages for Mac. The problem also appeared in Pages and was in fact even worse.

Is there a macro that I can run to fix this? Or is there another solution?

Thank you,

Eli

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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  1. Charles Kenyon 167.1K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2020-01-21T16:04:17+00:00

    Here is the link for the VBA script.

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api...

    @Jeganarayanan, you need to understand what you are advising when you post code like this.  Many users will have no clue how to do anything with a snippet of vba code. All you did with this link is essentially repeat that snippet. You did not say how to use it nor what it does.

    You did not give any advantage to using this rather than simply modifying the formatting in the document using the User Interface. Few formatting problems require code.

    @Eli

    Here are two pages that can be helpful to use that code.

    However, no macros or vba should be needed for this.

    Check out the suggestion by Bob Jones.

    In a copy of your document, try selecting all the problem text clicking on the Style being used in the Home tab. When asked, you do not want to redefine the style but rather reapply it to the text.

    Bob or another Mac user may be able to give you the clear [direct] formatting methods on the Mac that are the equivalent of Ctrl+Spacebar and Ctrl+Q.

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-01-21T19:47:51+00:00

    Many thanks to all of you! I got on the phone with Office 365 Tech support, and he fixed the problem in seconds. He taught me how to use the style copier (paintbrush icon) to duplicate the settings from one part of a document to another:

    Select correctly formatted text

    Then click the paintbrush and wait for the cursor to change to a paintbrush.

    Then select the incorrectly formatted text.

    Fixed!

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-01-21T12:21:36+00:00

    Thank you for your answer.

    Here is what I see when I toggle the show non-printing characters button:

    And this is what normal double spacing looks like in my document:

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-01-21T04:25:22+00:00

    Hi EliGarfinkel1,

    Have you tried adjust the paragraph spacing as shown in this link?

    https://support.office.com/en-us/article/remove...

    This example sets the line spacing for the selected paragraphs to be at least 12 points:

    With Selection.ParagraphFormat

    .LineSpacingRule = wdLineSpaceAtLeast

    .LineSpacing = 12

    End With

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  4. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2020-01-21T07:09:11+00:00

    If you turn on the display of non-printing characters, what do you see between the lines that are spaced wider than you want?

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