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querying the hive mind
At least something at Microsoft is left leaning
I am using a template developed about 8 years ago in Word. It is the template we use to publish our learning materials. Now that we are all on Windows 11 machines, the template headings and left margins have all moved off the page to the left when I open a document made in the template. I correct them, but next time I open the document, they have moved to the left again. What do I do to stop this? There is no mention of the word compatibility when I open a working document in this template.
It's doing my head in and impacting my work. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to quickly make this template compatible? There is no mention of 'compatibility' in the title when I open the doc and I can't find anything in Account or Info. Should I be looking in Options? Not waving, drowning.
posted by Thella on May 06, 2024 at 9:48 PM
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What version of Word was it created with and what version of Word are you using to open it now? I think the Word versions are more important than the Windows versions for this question
posted by TimHare at 9:51 PM
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A punt: Sounds like you may have toggled booklet view, where Word thinks you want to see the righthand one of a pair of pages.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:02 AM
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When you moved to Windows11, did your default printer change?
Some settings in Word, particularly page size and margins come from the printer setup not anything in the document or template.
If you don't have a printer setup at all, install one and set the page size/margins to something sensible. This applies even if you don't have a physical printer.
posted by Lanark at 4:22 AM
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Weird formatting issues can happen if you updated your Word version and have a template from an older version.
What kind of document is the template? If it's a Word template file (file extensions .dot or .dotx, with a yellow gradient on the icon) then the documents you created with it may be taking their format from the template and you have to change the template to fix it. Right click on the dot/dotx file and choose "open" (the default option when just double clicking is "new") and fix the formatting there first. If it's the older .dot file type, try saving it as a newer dotx instead. (Note: old documents created with a .dot template would not recognize that it needs to use the .dotx template version, so changing the extension might lead to additional wonkiness in existing documents.)
To get a better idea of which template may be an issue, you can enable the "developer" tab in Word. That tab is usually not checked by default in the ribbon, but it's where the template information for a document resides.
posted by gemmy at 4:38 AM
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