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?

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-10-05T10:24:36+00:00

    To all:

    An update: as I had to make a change to this document (a couple of text tweaks), and in light of this conversation, I have changed it to use the default "Narrow Margins" setting (12.7 mm) offered by desktop Word in the pull-down list of choices, eliminating the custom margins previously used. This was done on my laptop and saved - everything looks OK and fits, just, on 2 pages.

    I have not touched the header-zone / top-of-page at all.

    I went through tthe same procedure again (Laptop-SkyDrive-Android phone-SkyDrive-Laptop).

    I confirm that with the new settings, the header once again has been inserted on Android and is still not visible on the original laptop version - this was checked in a passive manner so as to perform no action which could be construed as an edit/delete/insert: by simply viewing the presence/absence of the ¶ character in the two documents (x and y).

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-10-05T09:20:21+00:00

    Hello, Doug. Firstly, thanks to you and all for continuing in my absence - it seems to be an interesting question (although, looking at it today, using the word "header" in the title would be helpful).

    To keep it brief and clear, Doug, your question is:

    Here is a question for you:  What do you mean when you say "when I remove a header I do so by removing the element itself"?

    Answer: What I mean by element is the header itself, rather than the text within the header. When one clicks on the "remove header" button, I assume that this not only makes the header paragraph empty, but also removes the header (what I call the "element" being the container holding the empty paragraph). It has always been my belief (and it has been valid until now) that the header and the header paragraph (empty or with text) are two different entities with the latter being within the former.

    Looking at the discussion this morning, I think the question has to be simple and clear for me to understand this discussion, so here it is:

    If there is a header in the document - whether with typed text; or an empty paragraph with only the ¶ character visible when visibility is enabled - and then one clicks on the "remove header" button - with the consequence that: the ¶ character is no longer displayed where it was previously in the header although the other ¶ characters are still visible elsewhere ; and the top of the first non-header section text moves up to take the place of the (supposedly deleted) header - is the header still present in the document, or has it (the container for the empty header paragraph) been completely removed and no is longer part of the remaining document?

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  3. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2015-10-05T08:00:39+00:00

    Charles,

    I think that you got that back to front.  You want to set the distance of the header from the edge of the page to 0 so that it does not affect the top margin as it may if it is set to a value that is more than the top margin.

    Here the header distance is set to 0 and the top margin is set to 5mm

    This is what happens if the top margin is 5mm and the distance of the header from the edge of the page is set to the default of 12.5mm (1/2")

    Sure, when you close the Header pane, the top margin reverts to where you expect it to be on the machine on which your are creating the document.

    However, it's when the document is re-laid out when opened on another device that the header distance may come into play again.

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  4. Charles Kenyon 171K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2015-10-05T05:20:53+00:00

    Hi Doug,

    I did open it on my phone. That definitely re-laid out the document.

    I'm confused. I want the space setting for the header area to be less than the top margin?

    In my test, I had a header area that was further down on the page than the top margin. If it is less than the top margin, why would it even change the text flow on the page?

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  5. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2015-10-05T03:23:56+00:00

    Hi Charles,

    As I said, you may not see the impact of the distance of the header from the edge of the page on the computer on which the document is created.  When however the document is opened on another device and the document needs to be re-laid out to suit the environment of that device, it is very likely that the distance of the header from the edge of the page will come into play again. The way to be sure that it does not have any impact is to set the distance to 0 or at least to a value that is less than the value of the top margin.

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