MS Word 2010 text alignment

[BOAC]

I'm tearing out my grey hair trying to get columns of text in a paragraph in the middle of a doc lined up - the 'Advance' field seems to be a nightmare and a 'sledgehammer'. 'Tables' seem to throw the whole paragraph awry, 'columns' throws the whole document out. I have now resorted to putting the text into Excel which has solved the problem with the L/R 'alignment' function - and is infinitely more simple.

Back in the 'old' days I used Wordperfect (I still have it installed!). That had a perfect, simple 'typeset' function. Why is Word so poor in this respect? What have I missed?

[Rengineer]

Which way?

BOAC,

normally you just mark the paragraphs you wish to align, then select left, right, centre, or whatever from the icon line - or go to the menu, select format, then paragraph, and you get a little window with the settings.

As always, Word will also allow you about half a dozen more complicated methods to achieve the same end, so if you'll describe how exactly you want your columns aligned, it should be easy to sort out.

And of course: You missed nothing. Word just is that way.

[forget]

BOAC, I remember a similar problem. Turned out it was the default tabs affecting alignment. 'Clear tabs' in the affected area then try the usual columns.

[BOAC]

To line up, in the middle of a document

aaaaaa 123 cc
xxxxxx 1655 zz

I know that 'Tables' allows right/left align, but I used to find WP's typeset so much more flexible.

I appreciate the reply, rengineer, but I think for ease of updating/modifying/changing layout, and since I would like summation of some of the values, I'll stick with the Excel solution. I also find the 'mathematical' functions in Word tables a distraction. I do not like the 'new' layout of the Word toolbar, and by the time I have located how to insert the correct formula in a table it is far quicker to use Excel with which I am quite familiar!

**** Luddite!

[Rengineer]

BOAC,

with the summation and all, it's probably fastest just to embed an Excel table like you choose. I'd often do the same.

Good luck!

[jimtherev]

Originally Posted by BOAC

**** Luddite!

If having direct control of my formatting, and easy access to templates &c is being a Luddite, then I'm one, too.
But having to delve through nests of menus and having to exercise the skills of a senior wrangler just to get the beast to so something simple is irritating in the extreme.

I appreciate that the average user (me, for one) only uses about 1% of the bells and whistles that Word 10 offers, but that others use small bits of the remaining 99%. I'll even reluctantly admit that M$ probably know what they're doing most of the time. But, hell's teeth, what a palaver when one wants to do something faintly non-standard!

[Keef]

Been there! I uninstalled Office 2007 and went back to Office 2003, which does all I want to do and much more, and does it in a way I can understand with toolbars I can drive. The menus stay put, and I've personalised them to show the things I use all the time, and I've put the stuff I don't use elsewhere.

I gave away Office 2007 to my neighbour's daughter for her birthday present laptop. She spent weeks learning to drive it, and is now very adept at it. I don't have weeks to spare (at my age). I won't be buying Office 2010.

Using Excel for such stuff isn't a bad idea anyway.

[P.Pilcher]

I upgraded my wife, a very experienced user of Word 6 and Word 97 to Word XP about 7 years ago. She has used it ever since. The other week she was writing and formatting a play script. To do this she included some excerpts she had downloaded from t'internet. The trouble was that these excerpts contained some advanced Word formatting commands with the result that, even with her experience, she was unable to format her script in the way that she wanted. After I had also tried and failed to format the text concerned because of all the advanced formatting that neither of us could either understand or remove, I finally managed to cut and paste the file into wordpad which failed to understand these commands, so the "purified" .txt file could be opened in Word, saved as a .doc file and then completely re-formatted in the form that my wife required. It took her ages but she finally obtained the result that she wanted. IMHO Microsoft's programming is so intuitive that "IT" thinks it knows what you want and manages to ensure that no other requirements can be implimented.
It is for this reason that I have often turned down the use of Word in DTP applications because of its insistence that words shall be placed "here" instead of where I want them. I remember once finding that to get a phrase placed exactly where I wanted, I had to quadruple its size and put it in subscript. This was too complex for me so I used a piece of well known software where I could pick up the words and move 'em with my mouse to their precise required location. So easy!

P.P.

[Keef]

Ah, PP, you have discovered what I learned a while ago. When importing stuff into Word etc, run it through a vanilla text editor to remove all the nonsense.

I use a prehistoric one called PFE (Programmers' File Editor) - probably 15 years old, but does the job superbly. Then Word doesn't go silly.

The same technique will also allow editing of stuff to make .csv files that can be imported and processed.

[Saab Dastard]

I upgraded my wife

We call it re-marrying in these parts!

SD

[jimtherev]

Well, Twickenham is really rather special, of course!

[Coconutty]

Not sure this is how you want it, but after creating your Table,
have you tried highlighting the cell(s) and right Clicking ?

This brings up a menu with the Cell Alignment option :

[BOAC]

Thanks coco - covered in post #4 and I have taken the lazy way out! Appreciate the effort there in getting the graphic up!