Why is it still Double Spacing?

Anonymous
2012-02-26T23:44:36+00:00

Original Title: WHY IT IS STILL DOUBLE SPACING?

I have been so ripped off.

 Give me word 2003 anyday.

 I paid for this. Then I had a nightmare getting it activated, it would not accept the key. But that was not what was the worst: It was getting to find help. I called the activation number, who transferred me to customer service, who had little girls who did not know what to do and wasted my time, only to transfer me back to the activation team and so on and so on for a good three hours one day.

 I was ready to scream. Just transfer me right to tech. The tech took care of that in less than five minutes.

Okay, so all should be okay, right?

 No IT IS NOT.

 An earlier tech made it so that my default in all my new word documents would be single space. I'm old school Nobody double spaces that's ridiciulous. I am writing a letter.

 Did it single space? No.

 I can't even figure out how to get it to stay in single space. I can find it, I can move it to single space. But the document won't do it.

 This is the worst expenditure of money. I want my money back. Uninstall this. I want to try that free software that is put out by some company I don't care but I'm happy to try it I'll be it is wonderful in its simplicity.

 Then I paid almost the same amount of money for outlook express. THAT was a mistake. I don't see how they send anythign or get anythign in fast, as when I click send/receive. .I just think it is sluggish, not nearly as clean, neat and breezy as the outlook that came with my old notebook.

 I have to end up calling tech suapport because I'm not going through any more irritation. This time I'm just asking to be transferred there. I have until April on this. I wish though I could go back in time and just NEVER buy it.

 I had upgraded once to IE 8 and kept getting this "corrupt file" message. It is like, theses folks make things deliberately  more complex so they can charge more money but in so doing, they are causing so many problems with their product people are getting disgusted.

 Again I go to start that letter and my train of thought is disrupted. Thanks a lot microsoft for wasting my time jacking me around on the phone when I should have received good service from the first call and been sent to tech, and thanks a lot for creating a chaotic software that is interrupting.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
2012-02-27T10:13:07+00:00

I gather that in the midst of your ranting, you are saying that you have not found out how to set the line spacing to single and make it stay that way.

Here is how to do it:

  1. On the Home tab of the ribbon, in the Paragraph section, click on the Line and Paragraph spacing button (to the left of the paint can) and select Line Spacing Options.
  2. In the Paragraph dialog that appears set the Line spacing to Single and set the Spacing Before or After to the value that you want for the spacing between paragraphs (I would recommend 12pts after).
  3. After making the above selections, click on the Set as Default button and when a dialog box appears that gives you the option to make the setting for "This document only?" or "All documents based on the Normal.dotm template?, select the latter and then click on OK.
  4. If when you quit Word you are asked if you want to save the Normal.dotm template, take the affirmative action.

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask them here, but please make the question as clear as possible and refrain from the rants, as the people that help you here are your fellow Word users and not employees of Microsoft.

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-06-03T16:18:49+00:00

    I had no luck with this. I did everything exactly but I still have double spacing in the first few lines of the document. After the first few lines, it WILL single space as I want. Does this have something to do with the "header" ?

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  2. Stefan Blom 353.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2016-02-11T19:20:10+00:00

    By default, the Line Spacing (= the distance between text lines within a paragraph) is a little larger in recent versions of Word, as is the Spacing After (= the spacing added for the paragraph that you see when pressing Enter).

    If you press Enter at the end of each text line, it may look similar to double spacing, I guess. However, you should only press Enter when you intend to create a new paragraph.

    As others have said, you can and you should change the defaults to suit your needs. The changed settings will apply to future documents. Existing documents must be dealt with one by one.

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  3. Paul Edstein 82,871 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2016-02-11T07:13:43+00:00

    This automatic double spacing is crazy.  Why would Microsoft keep doing this? Who writes business letters double spaced? 

    Your premise is false, as is your conclusion.

    No Word version has ever been supplied with double spacing as the default. Period.

    Word 2007 - 2010 came with the default line spacing set at 1.15 (not the 1.5 another poster claimed) and Word 2013 - 2016 come with the default line spacing set at 1.08 - most likely in response to customer feedback.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-02-11T06:24:34+00:00

    It will fix all NEW documents based on the normal template and the current document. For older documents you would need to update the styles in the document.

    The installed default is not 'double spaced' but currently 1.08 (in Word 2016) with 8pt of additional space between each paragraph. It was the same for Word 2013 but a little larger spacing in 2010 at 1.15 and 10 points respectively. It is a layout chosen for ease of readability.

    This is the normal paragraph style. There is preconfigured a No Space style, which you can use if you want no spacing, but the whole point of formatting a document with the styles on which Word is based is that you can define them to exactly suit the documents you are producing. Rather than 'waste time' using styles that are not suited to your requirements, create your own document templates with styles that are suited to those document types and consider the normal template as a scratch pad for ad hoc documents.

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