Margins change between desktop and mobile

Anonymous
2015-10-01T18:01:52+00:00

I have taken a while to carefully sculpt an important document on desktop (my resume in fact). It took me a long time to squeeze it all onto 2 pages, adjusting the top and bottom margins, fonts, etc, to make it happen.

The strange thing is that when I look at the document on Office for Mobile (Android, Nexus 4 phone, Android 5.1.1), it overflows onto a third page and the margins look wrong, as if they are the default setting. When I save as a new document, the changes ae kept in the new document without me doing anything to insert them.

What I'm worrying about, apart from the fact that their is a format change between devices, is that if I open a document on mobile which made on desktop and then share it, I will be sending an unfaithful copy. Furthermore, it will definitely cause problems when people collaborate.

Having taken a couple of minutes to check before posting, I noticed that the new document saved on Android actually had a header inserted (I don't know why that would happen). When I remove the header, the document is now on 2 pages, but there has been a slight change (line 1 of page 2 has moved up to the bottom of page 1). I've checked - you can remove headers in Word for Android (painful but possible) but it has the same line-shift as I found on desktop.

Please, does anyone know how I can avoid Word for Android changing my document?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

52 answers

Sort by: Newest
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2015-10-05T14:14:11+00:00

    Since the good news, I have thought of further investigating the difference between the two documents.

    Therefore, I've unzipped the docx files involved to look under the hood and there is immediately a glaring difference just by looking at the content of the bundles.

    In the case of the original desktop document (document x), this is the content of the word folder within the docx file:

    And in the case of the document y, the one resulting simply from opening document x in Word for Android (this is the bad result, not the result where I had set header distance to 0), the folder looks as follows:

    I find this to be rather enlightening and not an indicator of simple margin conflicts. Something definitely happens to a document when you open it on Android.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2015-10-05T12:17:27+00:00

    Charles, thanks for the reminder. With all this, which I have found to be confusing, I had forgotten to do that test.

    It works - there is no header inserted.

    For info: When I went to change that setting it was at 12.7mm (same as the margins).

    It hadn't caused a problem on PC but was causing a problem on Android. I still can't understand why Word for Android inserts a header (_yes it does_) to compensate for a margin conflict, but it does. I remain convinced that Microsoft should be aware of this as a probable issue for the developer pipeline.

    This morning I was wondering whether there is a conflict between the desktop and mobile normal.dotm files even though that still wouldn't explain the insertion of a header. Now we know it's the margin/header space conflict which causes this to happen. I don't know the internal working of OOXML, but obviously Word for Android handles the conflict in a particular way while the desktop version of Word 2016 either considers that there is no problem or ignores it.

    I maintain that, because Microsoft is pushing its marketing along advanced collaboration (see the latest changes in Word 2016), this will be an issue for other users in the future if it is not dealt with. As I said, I don't find any great need for this sort of collaboration (although maybe my next role will call for it, heaven forbid).

    Good on you, Charles, for reminding me to do that test!

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2015-10-05T12:04:14+00:00

    Doug, no. When I remove header and have the display of non-printing characters displayed, that character does not remain.

    For information to all, I am using Word 2016. Sorry for the late information, if it changes anything.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  4. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2015-10-05T11:46:18+00:00

    The Remove Header button only removes the text from the header.  The empty paragraph (¶) remains and will be visible if you have the display of non-printing characters displayed.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  5. Charles Kenyon 171K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2015-10-05T11:24:09+00:00

    Try setting the distance from edge of page for the header (whether or not it exists) to 0.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments