Re: TIP - more about Word anchors, para spacing

[Jeff Scattini <jeff -dot- scattini -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Thanks, Monique!

This will definitely help me on a current project.

-Jeff

On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 2:20 PM, Monique Semp <monique -dot- semp -at- earthlink -dot- net>wrote:

> Hello, writers,
>
> So yesterday I did solve my migrating anchored callouts problem (lock the
> anchor), but I just wasn’t satisfied because I still didn’t quite
> understand why things were behaving the way they were.
>
> (Yes, I know it’s Word, but usually if you dig deep enough there is a
> repeatable, predictable behavior. And while it’s not always logical to my
> mind, I really don’t care because if it’s predictable I can work with it
> and accept it as Word’s Way.)
>
> So after much after-hours research, here’re a couple of tidbits that might
> interest some of you:
>
> 1. I’d earlier pondered why one would ever want an anchor to not be
> locked. I still don’t understand what use case there is for not locking it,
> but at least I now know what Word does with the anchors!
>
> As found on Allen Wyatt’s WordTips site,
> http://word.tips.net/T001743_Pictures_Move_on_their_Own.html, “The other
> important check box is Lock Anchor. This check box controls whether the
> anchor can move or not. Normally, if you click on a picture and drag it to
> a new location, THE ANCHOR FOR THAT PICTURE IS CHANGED TO THE PARAGRAPH
> NEAREST THE NEW LOCATION FOR THE PICTURE. If you lock the anchor, the
> anchor stays put, even though you moved the picture.” (all caps emphasis
> mine)
>
> So that explains why even though I was sure then when I’d been copying a
> callout shape and anchoring it to the caption paragraph, the callouts kept
> ending up anchored to the figure paragraph. And the space above the figure
> paragraph varies depending on whether it’s at the top of the page (because
> Word does suppress the space above paragraphs when they’re at the top so
> that there’s not a bunch of extra space).
>
> 2. While I was still working things out, I noticed that switching between
> the top of the page and not wasn’t the only time that the callouts moved.
> If I changed the style of paragraph that preceded the Figure paragraph,
> *sometimes* the callouts would shift. I did realize that the anchor was at
> the figure paragraph, but since that para’s space-above setting didn’t
> change in this case, I couldn’t understand why things would shift just
> based on the fact that the new preceding paragraph’s style had a different
> space-after setting.
>
> Here’s the deal: By default Word does NOT add the preceding para’s
> space-below value to the next para’s space-above value and use the total.
> Instead, it just uses the maximum of those two settings. But you CAN change
> that behavior so that the two values get added, which is what I’d intended
> all along anyway and now have better spaced pages, especially when I’ve got
> two figures in a row.
>
> (I found this tidbit here:
> http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.word.formatting.longdocs/browse_thread/thread/3608f776f292b970?pli=1
> .)
>
> -Monique
>
>
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