Formatting in MS Word

Question

I am using MS office 365. I keep receiving a message "Column width cannot be less than 1.27 cm" . I deleted all tables in my word document but it still shows up. How can I fix it?

Answer 1

Column width may refer to newspaper columns. Click Layout > Columns > More Columns. In the dialog box, click the "One" preset (even if it already appears to be selected), choose "Whole document" in the "Apply style" drop down, and finally click OK.

Answer 2

Thanks for your reply. I tried your suggestions many times but do not work. I noticed that I cannot change the column width that is 1.27 cm. Yours is 16 cm.

Answer 3

See: Why a sample file is important for troubleshooting. How to do it.

Answer 4

If it is referring to tables, the problem could be hidden in other places, in other "layers" of the document.

Did you look in the headers and footers?

Inside any text boxes.

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How long is the document?

If all else fails, consider using the brute force approach. SAVE AS to TXT format. The copy the TXT into a new blank DOCX file. Re apply all formatting. Copy all images and other lost context from the original document to the new copy.

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Actually if it is a long document you can apply a "binary search" technique.

• Make a copy of the file
• Start a new blank document
• Copy half of the problem file into the blank
• Save. If you get an error, the problem is in that half, if not, try the other half.
• Keep working your way through the problem "halves" until you locate the problem in a section that is small enough to recreate quickly.

Answer 5

My default page format and margins will always make a single column 16 cm wide.

Does nothing change on your system if you click the "One" preset? In that case, maybe the issue with your document is not related to newspaper columns. It is difficult to tell for certain.

As Charles suggested, consider sharing a sample document with the forum.