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Jay Freedman
 
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Default Word 97 in Windows XP to maintain formatting

There is one known problem with Word 97 on Windows XP, that users without
Administrator privileges may not be able to run the spell checker. There's
an easy fix for it:
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/...edOutWin2k.htm.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org

Suzanne S. Barnhill wrote:
Yes, Word 97 will run fine under Windows XP.


"Charlie''s Word VBA questions"
m wrote in message
...
Thank you for the info, Suzanne.
I have had several cases where the text no longer fits within a
table cell, so I bet you are right. When I changed the spacing
between cells from .03 to .02, it fit OK. Unfortunately, I have
hundreds of tables. I wrote a macro using "Selection.Information" to
show a MsgBox with the exact position of the cursor in inches,
points and twips. There is a small difference. For example, at the
end of a given line, the measurement from the left edge of the page
in Word 97 was 6.19514 inches (446.05 points) and in Word 2003, it
was 6.29097 inches (452.95 points). Even less than a tenth of an
inch (or even a hundredth) can really make quite a difference.
Interestingly, the distance from the top of the page was LESS. In
Word 97, it was 6.36111 inches (458.00 points) and in 2003, it was
6.27361 inches (451.70 points). This also doesn't explain why a
word in another paragraph was moved up to the preceding line.

In fact, I haven't really tested this very much, but even the macro
display (which includes spaces to "columnize" the measurement text)
was different.

I am supposing there is no solution to this. I would prefer to not
do so, but I again ask whether Word 97 can be installed under XP. I
can imagine this might cause a whole new set of problems and seems
like going backwards.

I really appreciate your ideas and advice.

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

I suspect there really was a change in metrics somewhere along the
line. I don't remember whether it was between 97 and 2002 or
earlier that I saw this, but I know that I had a complex lease form
that, when opened in a newer version, was actually cutting text off
at the edge. I forget whether the problem was with table cells that
weren't quite wide enough any more or right-aligned tab stops that
had to be moved a hair in from the margin or what, but it was very
annoying.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

"Charlie''s Word VBA questions"
m wrote in
message ...
Thanks, Suzanne. Unfortunately, that didn't help.
Maybe it is helpful if I point out that (I'm rough estimating, not
counting) about 60 % or so of the paragraphs are not a problem.
This is probably because they are left justified and each line
ends a sufficient

distance
from
the margin. I guess that about 30% or so of the paragraphs have
one

or
more
words that flow to the next line. Probably only 2 or 3% of the
paragraphs have (usually) only one or two words that flow to the
preceding line

in
the
paragraph. This is rare.
Frankly, none of this makes any sense to me, since I verified that
the font, font size and margins did not change.
Is there any possibility that Word calculates space between words
or from the end of a line to the margin, even if the paragraph is

left-justified?
If
so, could their algorithms have changed? I'm really clutching at

straws,
I
know.

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

You might also try selecting "Do full justification like
WordPerfect" in Tools | Options | Compatibility. This usually
compresses justified

lines
a
bit.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

"Charlie''s Word VBA questions"
m wrote in
message ...
Thank you, Graham.
In fact, the old printer driver (HP) is installed on the XP

machine as
well
as a new (Canon) printer driver. I have switched back and forth
between printers, with "Use printer metrics" both On and Off.
While I could sometimes see very minor differences in the
display, that did not
resolve
the
problem. And yet, a very small difference such as right
indenting

a
test
paragraph by -.05" solved the problem for that one paragraph. I

guess
I
don't really understand how Word uses the printer to format the
display
and
print.
I also tried to install the old Arial font after renaming it
"OldArial",
but
Windows was smart enough to prevent it. I also took a snapshot
of

a
test
paragraph on both machines and viewed them at 10x zoom. I didn't

see
any
differences in the pixels for each letter nor for spacing
between letters. It was just a guess on my part.

"Graham Mayor" wrote:

This is nothing to do with any difference between the file

formats
of
Word
97 and Word 2003 (which are effectively the same) but with the

fact
that
different printer drivers (and possibly different releases of

the
font
files) were used to create the documents. Word formats according

to
the
current printer driver. You would have to have the same printer
driver
(and
I mean the driver not the printer) and font outlines present as
when
you
created the document in Word 97. Adding Word 97 to your current
installation will not affect the issue.
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/TextReflow.htm

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


Charlie''s Word VBA questions wrote:
Can I install Word 97 in Windows XP? I have Office 2003 with
Word 2003 already installed.
However, I have many 97 documents that, when opened on 2003,
line spacing and text formatting is sufficiently changed to
cause many, many problems. These are student workbooks with
font sizes of

12
and
14 points. Words on a line flow to the next line causing
paragraph/page overflow. Sometimes a word actually fits on

the
line
above. These documents contain a lot of formulas and
programming code examples so formatting and spacing is very
precise and critical. Even text forming formulas and program
code in a table may overflow resulting in misalignment of
lines that must be precisely

aligned.
I
have tried every option I can think of including all
compatibility options as Word 6.0, 97 and 2003, with printer
metrics turned

on
and
off. The only fixes I have come up with are doing things like
reducing font size by .5 point, setting paragraph right indent
by even as little as negative .05 inches. But I would have to
do this line by line or paragraph by paragraph. I spent nearly
a week just finding (But not yet correcting) problems in ten
documents. I am considering installing Word 97 to solve this
problem (although I am not sure it will). What conflicts will
I encounter? Can I keep 2003 and 97? Is there any other way
to "freeze" spacing?