Shifting Margins Evident in Word 2002

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated September 7, 2019)

Matt is experiencing a problem with documents created in Word 2000 and then viewed in Word 2002. He's noticing a shift in the top and bottom margins of the pages. When he opens a document that was created in Word 2000 on a Word 2002 system, the two margins are shifted upwards, even though the margin settings are the same.

This is caused by different ways in which the two versions of Word calculate the effect that line spacing has on the margins. The easiest way to make sure that the two versions handle margins the same is to follow these steps:

Open the document in the Word 2000 system.
Choose Options from the Tools menu. Word displays the Options dialog box.
Make sure the Compatibility tab is displayed. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Compatibility tab of the Options dialog box.

Note which compatibility options are selected. Pay particular attention to the settings entitled Suppress Extra Line Spacing at Bottom of Page and Suppress Extra Line Spacing at Top of Page.
Close the Options dialog box.
Open the document in the Word 2002 system.
Choose Options from the Tools menu. Word displays the Options dialog box.
Make sure the Compatibility tab is displayed.
Make sure the compatibility options are set the same as they are on the Word 2000 system.
Close the Options dialog box.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (297) applies to Microsoft Word 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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