Horizontal Alignment Errors for Graphics

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated August 10, 2019)
This tip applies to Word 97 and 2000

If you are a Word 2000 user and you insert graphics into your documents, and you later open the same documents in Word 97, you may have noticed that the graphics don't line up horizontally in the way you expect. This problem rears its ugly head when you set the wrapping style of the picture to a setting other than in line with text, and you set the horizontal alignment of the picture using the Layout tab of the Format Picture dialog box.

The reason for this problem is that Word 2000 uses a different horizontal alignment algorithm for graphics than what was used in Word 97. When you subsequently load the document in Word 97, the alignment settings computed in Word 2000 are misinterpreted in Word 97.

As of right now there is no totally acceptable cure for the problem. Microsoft may release a fix in a future service pack for Word, but there are no guarantees. If you later open the document in Word 2000 again, the problem should go away. If it doesn't, then you have no other choice than to reset the horizontal position of the affected graphics.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (670) applies to Microsoft Word 97 and 2000.

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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