Forum Discussion

LMcIntire's avatar
LMcIntire
Copper Contributor
Nov 16, 2022

Problem with formatting/columns/error code that won't go away

I'm getting this when I try to squeeze in my margins. "Increasing left margin causes first column to become too narrow in some sections having unevenly spaced columns." I've tried all the tricks I ...
Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP's avatar
Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP
MVP
Nov 18, 2022

 LMcIntire Beginning with Section 80 on Page 71, the document is set up with three "newspaper style" columns, with widths of 9.9 mm, 38.4 mm and 76.3 mm and it is because of that setup that you get that message when you try to adjust the margins.

 

Instead of those three "newspaper style" columns, a table should be used for that content.

 

I suspect that the document was created from a scanned image\pdf file as it is really quite a mess.

 

 

  • LMcIntire's avatar
    LMcIntire
    Copper Contributor
    Nov 18, 2022

    Oh it’s a Frankenstein for sure! From what I’m told, several different people had their hands in this and all used different settings a style sheets etc. i just need to import it into InDesign the most efficient way possible to hopefully perform minimal reformatting. Maybe I’ll just have to copy and paste it all and lose ALL the formatting which will be super time consuming. Unless i can fix the margins in word. What i need is a mirror page layout with .25 top, .46 bottom, .625 outside and .375 inside. I’ve tried many different ways and it will NOT reflow to those margins throughout the document. I know enough about Word to be dangerous 😉 that’s about it. I appreciate any help you can give as i need to get this project going and printed. Ugh! Thank you!

  • LMcIntire's avatar
    LMcIntire
    Copper Contributor
    Nov 18, 2022
    I’m sorry, the measurement i gave you were inches, by the way.
    • Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP's avatar
      Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP
      MVP
      Nov 18, 2022

      LMcIntire In the attached document, I used CTRL+A to select everything and then accessed the Page Setup>Columns dialog and clicked the checkbox for Equal column width so that it had a tick.   Then it was possible to set the margins to the values that you specified.  It will however and change the layout of those Sections of the document for which Uneven Columns had been used where a table should have been used.

       

      Before:

      After:

       

       

      • LMcIntire's avatar
        LMcIntire
        Copper Contributor
        Nov 18, 2022
        I did the same thing, but Word would not allow me to change the margins and values… I tried importing and it did the same thing. Only placed the first 10-11 pages. Could there be something corrupt? I even tried copy and pasting all into a new Word doc from the original one then importing again. Still wouldn’t work. Not sure what InDesign is not liking about this file! Thank you for your help…