Across-page line drawing in Word

[John Gray]

I knew that if you typed a number of underlines at the start of a line, and pressed Enter, then you would get a thick horizontal line all the way across the page, from left margin to right margin. But I didn't know that you could use other characters, as follows:

LineDraw.GIF

[HansV]

It's documented in the Word help, for example Automatic formatting results.

By the way, three consecutive characters followed by Enter are sufficient.

[Samantha]

I don't have Word on my home computer, so someone should check my memory; however, I seem to recall that as little as three asterisks in a row would trigger an entire line across the page. (Nevermind -- Hans beat me to it!)

I had discovered most of the trigger characters you listed by accident, but I'd never stumbled across the tilde. I wonder if there are any more out there -- perhaps the caret (^) or the plus sign (+)?

[HansV]

According to the link in my previous reply, the six characters listed by John Gray are the only ones that result in borders.

[Samantha]

I was experimenting in Open Office to see what I could generate there, and testing multiple instances of the + and the | both resulted in an instant table, with the plus sign providing a wider, but still narrow cell.

In reading Hans' link on autoformat functions, I see that the plus sign and hyphens (e.g. +----+-----------+----+) can be used to create tables, so it makes sense that several plus signs in a row would result in very narrow table cells. I don't know if Open Office's use of the multiple vertical lines (|||) with or without intervening hyphens works in Word.

[HansV]

Vertical dashes |, whether interspersed with + or not, won't work in Word as far as I know.

[Pilgrim]

Hmmm, I just tried these "page lines" in Word 2007 and they don't work. I also noticed that when I open a new blank document my cursor is at the very top where it used to be about an inch down. Normally, I can change the top margin by simply dragging the left ruler but there is no "tab" to drag.

Any ideas on either of these two items; 1) no line drawing and/or 2) top margin missing?

[HansV]

1. This is an AutoFormat As You Type option:
- Click the Office button.
- Click Word Options.
- Click Proofing in the navigation pane on the left hand side.
- Click AutoCorrect Options...
- Activate the AutoFormat As You Type tab.
- Tick the check boxes labeled Borders and Tables.
- OK your way out.

2. This is a display option.
- Click the Office button.
- Click Word Options.
- Click Display in the left-n=hand pane.
- Tick the check box labeled Show white space between pages in Print Layout view.
- OK your way out.

Alternatively, move the mouse pointer to the top of the page, until it changes to an icon of two pages with up and down arrows.
Double-click to show white space between pages.

[Pilgrim]

1. The AutoFormat As You Type options were all checked. But I "OK'd" my way out anyway and then it worked.

2. The "Alternate" suggestion using the mouse pointer, etc., worked like a charm. I must have somehow messed that one up myself.

[HansV]

Sometimes an application needs a little reminder of its settings...