Gutters (2003)

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Hello,

I am trying to add a .3″ gutter to my document, and each time I do it, I get a message stating the following: “Increasing left margin causes first column to become too narrow in some sections having unevently spaced columns.” First off, this confuses me because the section where I am adding the gutter has no columns. But even if I were to apply these gutters to the very limited sections that do have 2 columns, how could I get around this quirk?

Sincerely,

JMT

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Make sure that “Equal column width” is ticked in the Format | Columns dialog for all sections that have multiple columns.
For the sections having one column, open the Format | Columns dialog and select “One” (even though it is already selected), then click OK. Some newsgroup posts mention this as a potential remedy.

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Hi there,

I tried those remedies, but still no luck.

I am attaching a sample of the document. Can you see if it can be fixed?

Thank you.

JMT

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There is a problem with section 5 in the document. It is the section without text between the continuous section break at the end of the section with 2 columns, and the last (odd page) section break.
Click between these two section breaks (or click near the end of the section with two columns, then use the right-arrow key until you see Sec 5 in the status bar).
If you select Format | Columns, you’ll see that the column widths for this section are not equal (and are rather bizarre).
Either tick the check box for “Equal column width”, or click the “Two” columns setting, then click OK. You should now be able to set the gutter margin elsewhere in the document.

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Thank you, Hans, but how can you know that that is section 5?

I tried to “click between these two section breaks (or click near the end of the section with two columns, then use the right-arrow key until you see Sec 5 in the status bar,” but I couldn’t. Do you mean that I should right click between the 2 sections? If so, what do I do with the menu that pops up? Also, where is the status bar?

Also, how did you locate the problem? My document all together is 182 pages. Do I have to just manually click in every section (I think there are 29 sections) until I find the one causing the problem?

I checked every section where there are two columns set up, and made sure that “Equal column width” is ticked. But the document still won’t let me set up a .3″ gutter, not even a .1″ gutter for that matter.

I can’t post the entire document here because of its size (1.06 MB), but if you have any other suggestions, we can go forward.

Thanks a lot for your help.

JMT

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It helps to show non-printing characters (using the Show/Hide button on the toolbar), so that you can see section breaks.

You could position the insertion point at the beginning of the document, then select Edit | Go To… (or press Ctrl+G).
Select Section in the Go To list.
Click Next to go to the next section until you see a section that either has two columns or where it isn’t obvious how many columns there are.
You can select Format | Columns without closing the Go To dialog.

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That Go To function is quite a fancy trick. It helped me to find the culprit section without expending too much time. Thanks for your help! How do you know so much?

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I don’t know all that much, but most of what I know, I found out by being curious and by experimenting.

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Understatement personified!

curious

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[indent]

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I don’t know all that much

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You’re too modest!

Ian

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