Fixing Vertically Cramped Text

Amber recently started working with some rather old Word documents. They are old enough that the person who created them is no longer with her company. When she opens the documents, several of them seem vertically "squished," meaning that in some of the paragraphs, the vertical spacing between lines is gone and the letters run into each other. Amber doesn't understand why this is happening.

There could be several reasons why this is happening. The first thing you should try is to make sure that you are viewing the document at a zoom level of at least 100%. (You can change this using the zoom slider at the right side of the status bar.)

Next, select a paragraph and then press Ctrl+Spacebar followed by Ctrl+Q. (I'm suggesting only doing this with a single paragraph just for testing purposes. You could also select the whole document, if preferred.) The Ctrl+Spacebar shortcut removes any explicit character formatting and Ctrl+Q removes any explicit paragraph formatting.

If that doesn't work, then take a look at the definition for the style applied to the paragraph. Follow these steps with the paragraph still selected:

1. Display the Home tab of the ribbon and then click the small icon at the bottom-right of the Styles group. Word displays the Styles task pane at the right side of the screen.
2. In the list of styles shown, hover the mouse pointer over the name of the style that has a box around it. (The box indicates that the style is applied to the paragraph in selected in the document.) A drop-down arrow should appear at the right side of the style name.
3. Click the drop-down arrow and choose Modify. Word displays the Modify Style dialog box. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Modify Style dialog box.

4. Using the Font drop-down list, just under the Formatting heading, make sure that the font is one installed on your system. An uninstalled font can cause Word to substitute a different font that doesn't display correctly.
5. Click the Format button (lower-left corner of the dialog box) and choose Paragraph. Word displays the Paragraph dialog box with the Indents and Spacing tab selected. (See Figure 2.)



Figure 2. The Indents and Spacing tab of the Paragraph dialog box.

6. Make sure that the Line Spacing controls are set to something that makes sense for your chosen font.
7. Click OK to close the Paragraph dialog box.
8. Click the Format button and then choose Font. Word displays the Font dialog box.
9. Display the Advanced tab. (See Figure 3.)



Figure 3. The Advanced tab of the Font dialog box.

10. Make sure the Scale setting is 100%.
11. Make sure the Spacing and Normal settings are set to Normal.
12. Click OK to close the Font dialog box.
13. Click on OK to close the Modify Style dialog box.

If this fixes the problem for the single paragraph, then you may need to repeat the process for every other style used in the document. This can obviously take quite a while to do. For that reason, you may want to simply copy the text from the old document and paste it into a brand-new document:

1. Open the old document and a brand-new document.
2. In the old document, press Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C. That copies the entire document to the Clipboard.
3. In the new document, click the down-arrow at the right of the Paste tool on the Home tab of the ribbon, then choose Paste Special. Word displays the Paste Special dialog box. (See Figure 4.)



Figure 4. The Paste Special dialog box.

4. Select Unformatted Text.
5. Click on OK.

Now you can go through the text in the new document and format it as desired. Understand that not everything may have transferred from the old document, particularly things like images, drawings, comments, and notes.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (10148) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Word in Microsoft 365.