Right side margins in Word documents

Jerry M · December 2011

Sometimes when you copy text from a web page it creates a "fluid" right side margin so that when you compile a personal book you can widen the pane and the text widens with it. Other times the text forms a column and you only have a lot of white space on the right. Is there a way to format the text so that it behaves like Logos edition books? (Pardon my crude description) Thanks.

Rosie Perera · December 2011

EDIT (original text deleted; just read your question more carefully).

That's because when you copy/paste from a web page it sometimes comes into word inside a table. To remove the text from the table, first select the table (hover the mouse near the upper left of the table and the mouse pointer will become a 4-headed arrow, then click). Then select Table Tools > Layout > Convert to Text. Chances are you can accept the default settings in the dialog box and click OK.

Note: these instructions are for Word 2007. Might be slightly different in Word 2010. And if you've got Word 2003, the command is on the Table menu. I think it's something like Table > Convert > Table to Text, but I can't remember.

Jerry M · December 2011

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/312694#Comment_312694

Hi Rosie, I have seen the table with the 4-headed arrow before in Word, but I can't in this case. I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but it is a shtml web page. At any rate here is the link if you want to check it out. You could just copy a paragraph into Word to test it.

Read the ebook Thoughts on the apocalypse by Benjamin Wills Newton

or Here

Full text of "Thoughts on the apocalypse"

Rosie Perera · December 2011

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/312711#Comment_312711

Ah, I see the problem. The lines end with line feed characters, rather than allowing automatic word-wrapping to occur throughout the paragraph. You can see these characters in Word if you turn on "Show all formatting marks" in Word Options (or press Ctrl+*, that is Ctrl+Shift+8):

To fix that, you'll have to do a global replace in Word after pasting in all your text. Replace the non-breaking space (which shows up as a little circle in "Show all formatting marks" mode) and linefeed with a simple space. Here's how:

Note that's caret, lower-case s, caret, lower case L (with no spaces between) in the "Find what" box, and simply a space in the "Replace with" box (I left the insertion caret showing so you could see that it wasn't an empty box). Click on Replace All.