[Klaus Linke]

Hi,

No idea why Word acts that way...
It looks like a bug or very weird design to me.

You could save the document you have formatted the way you like it as a
template, say Text.dot.
Then next time you usually would open a text file, instead create a new
(empty) document based on that template, and use "Insert File" to insert
the text.

Regards,
Klaus



"geekgrrl" wrote:
Hello,

I am trying to open a .txt file in Word. The .txt file was created on
a mainframe and can be up to 134 characters wide. Is there no way that
I can get this document to display properly upon opening?

If I open the document, change the font used for Plain Text style to be
Courier New 8 point instead of Courier New 10 point, and change the
page layout to Letter Landscape, my mainframe txt file fits on the
page.

I can change (and have changed) the Plain Text style to always be
Courier New 8 point, and change my Normal.dot to have all my documents
automatically open in Letter Landscape with 1" margins. This does not
work when I open a .txt file using Word. It formats the plain text as
if it was letter portrait and places it smack in the middle of my
Letter Landscape page (basically increasing the L/R margins from 1" to
2.17")

Is there a way to change how Word opens and formats a .txt file?
Without having to run extra macros and whatnot? I have a tool that
creates TIFF files by automating the opening and printing txt files
using Word to a special virtual printer, and if I can get Word to open
the .txt file in the format/layout I need then I can use my tool to
automatically convert my (many) txt files to the TIFF files I need.

Thanks,
Sheri