Word 2013 advance field

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Many of the templates we use were devloped in 2007 and utilise the avance field fro the precise placement of text on a page. It appears that this field is ignored in Word 2013.
In a document I have just converted there are 3 groups of text advanced to 206, 336 and 693 pts from the top of the page. In 2013 they are all grouped at the top of the page.

Does anyone have any glues as to why this is happening and how to overcome?

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Many of the templates we use were developed in 2007 and utilise the advance field for the precise placement of text on a page. It appears that this field is ignored in Word 2013.
In a document I have just converted there are 3 groups of text advanced to 206, 336 and 693 pts from the top of the page. In 2013 they are all grouped at the top of the page.

Does anyone have any clues as to why this is happening and how to overcome?

AFAIK, the Advance Field works in word 2013.
Here is a link to the support page:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Advance-field-6379bd1b-49be-4c85-95e6-f42b44ab0e70

In your document, in Word 2013, when you press Alt+F9 to toggle field codes, do you see the fields? Can you post a sample document? (Use the Go Advanced button and the attachment icon to do this.)

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Charles thanks for that
When I press Alt + F9 the fields show as normal in curly brackets with the /y code attached.

The attached document is the whole document but it is the text on page 2 that is the problem

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I looked at the document in both Word 2013 and 2010. The advance fields on page 2 (the page following the cover page) work fine in both versions of Word on my machine.

Are you sure you are in print layout mode rather than in draft mode in Word 2013? If so, try opening Word 2013 in safe mode and then, from within Word, opening your document.

You may want to edit your last post to remove the attachment if it contains any proprietary information.

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Definetly in Print layout.
Started in safe mode, no change
The document is a public document so no worries

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When you print the document, what happens.

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There is a known bug (since at least April 2013) with Word 2013 not respecting the y switch in ADVANCE fields. MS doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to fix it…

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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It was always my understanding that Microsoft implemented the Advance field so that WordPerfect documents (where Advance codes were very popular and frequently used) would convert easily to Word format. I recall MS suggesting that it not be used other than in converted WP documents. That stiff warning is not in the knowledge base currently, but the KB says: “Before you use this field, however, you may first want to consider adjusting the text placement using one of the following methods:…” That doesn’t sound like a solid endorsement by Microsoft Support.

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Thanks Paul
That’s about when we first noticed it but have only just started using 2013 full time.

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After reading Paul’s post, I went back and looked at your document again. I’m not sure what it was that I saw before, but I can confirm that it doesn’t work in Word 2013 now.

I’ve added a note about this bug to my scratch page on fields.

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Well, they’ve done better by the Advance Field than they have with Master Documents which was introduced for competitive reasons.

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Richard
Thanks. I was one that used the advance in Wordperfect

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