Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Office 365. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Graphics and Line Height.

Graphics and Line Height

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated January 1, 2022)

Have you ever placed a graphic in your document, only to find that you can see only a small portion of the bottom of it? The cause of this problem, believe it or not, lies in your paragraph formatting. When you insert an in-line graphic, it inherits the style of the surrounding text. This can cause problems when the style uses fixed line spacing, (for example, "Exactly 14 pt") because the image is forced to this line height as well.

To fix this problem, follow these steps after you have the graphic inserted in your document:

Either select the graphic (by clicking on it once) or position the insertion point somewhere in the same paragraph that contains the graphic.
Display the Home tab of the ribbon.
Click the Line Spacing tool (Word 2007) or the Line and Paragraph Spacing tool (later versions of Word) in the Paragraph group. Word displays some spacing options.
Choose the 1.0 option.

When line spacing is set to Single (which is what these steps do), Word automatically uses the height of the tallest element in each line as the height of the line. In the case of your graphic, there is a very good chance that it is the tallest item. By changing to single line spacing, the line on which the graphic is located can expand to its full height.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (9447) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Office 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Graphics and Line Height.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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