Jumping to the End of Page after Enter

by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 16, 2013)

Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Jumping to the End of Page after Enter.

Gretchen is experiencing a problem that just started happening in Word. When she types a line of text and presses Enter, the cursor automatically skips to the end of the page. She has re-set the defaults, restarted the computer, even re-installed the software, but it is still happening.

The problem is probably because of a setting in the layout of the page, as defined in your Normal.dot file. (When you reinstall the software, the installer doesn't overwrite an existing copy of Normal.dot, so any settings it contained before are still there after the reinstall.) Here's what to do:

1. Load your Normal.dot file. You want to actually locate it on disc and load it; don't simply create a document based upon it.
2. Choose Page Setup from the File menu. Word displays the Page Setup dialog box.
3. Make sure the Layout tab is displayed. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Layout tab of the Page Setup dialog box.

4. Using the Vertical Alignment drop-down list, choose Top.
5. Click OK.
6. Save your Normal.dot template.

This will help correct the problem in future documents. If the problem exists in documents you previously created, you'll need to load the document and perform the same steps on them individually.

If you have the vertical alignment (step 4) set to some other value, then Word tries to distribute your text across the page vertically according to the setting. This can make it seem like the cursor jumps to the end of the page when you press Enter; if the Vertical Alignment drop-down is set to Justified, then the jump would be exactly as described after pressing Enter.

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