Paragraph Spacing command does nothing

Question

I've been teaching students how to use Office 2010 for years, but now have to adapt to Office 2013. One of the new features in Word is the Design tab, and it has a Document Formatting group that contains a Paragraph Spacing command. The Tool Tip for the command states the command will quickly change the paragraph spacing and line spacing of all existing and new paragraphs, but when I try to apply one of the choices, such as Open, which is supposed to set line spacing at 1.15 and space after paragraph of 10 pt, nothing happens. Nothing happens with any of the choices under the Paragraph Spacing command.

I can go to the Home tab, Paragraph group and launch the dialog and change line spacing and space after paragraph, and it works fine. I can modify the Normal style and it affects everything. But Paragraph Spacing does not affect anything. If I look at one of the offending paragraphs using the Style Inspector, I see that the style is normal style plus paragraph formatting set to single line spacing with no space after. I would expect, given the tool tip for the Paragraph Spacing command, that it would override those settings, but that does not appear to be the case. I know I can select the entire document and remove all formatting, but that's really extreme and formatting such as centering titles and subtitles is wiped out. Is there a way to enable built-in choices from Paragraph Spacing to override existing modifications?

Answer 1

These settings affect the Normal style (and presumably will be propagated to styles based on Normal), but this works only if direct paragraph formatting has not been applied. You can test this by creating a page of dummy text, applying direct paragraph formatting to just one of the paragraphs, and then mousing over the selections in the Paragraph Spacing gallery. You'll see all of the paragraphs change except the one that has been directly formatted. If the spacing of the Normal style has actually been modified, you can still change the spacing using the gallery (the setting you choose is applied to the Normal style).

Answer 2

Using Ctrl+Q to reset to the underlying style is a good tip. Thanks!

Answer 3

You are welcome. I'm glad you got this sorted!

Answer 4

The commands you mention should modify the Normal style. Have you tried using Ctrl+Q, which resets paragraph formatting (line spacing, spacing before/after, etc.) to that of the underlying style?

Answer 5

The Paragraph Spacing command works for me just the way you expected it to. In fact, having the "Live Preview" item checked in File > Options > General, I can watch the spacing expand as I move the mouse down the list of spacings.

Try starting Word in safe mode (hold down the Ctrl key while it starts up). Does the Paragraph Spacing command work then? If so, try renaming Normal.dotm and restarting Word normally; or try disabling one add-in at a time (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/921541 but skip the steps that involve the registry).