If you’ve upgraded to one of the ribbon-interface versions of Microsoft Office recently, you may have noticed that every new document you create (as opposed to editing or making new documents from earlier ones) has this weird, more open line spacing.
What’s the story?
Well, it seems that Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, decided that since we’re all posting documents on the Interwebs, we could all do with a more online-friendly line spacing scheme. So they made line spacing in the Normal template 1.15 instead of 1. By default.
The default paragraph settings for Word 2010
Um … no.
If you want to change the default back to that single line spacing that looks good on paper, then here’s what you do:
- On the home tab of the ribbon, find the Styles section (on the right). You’ll see a drop-down called Change Styles. Click it, then choose Style Set, then click on Word 2003 (which will change the default styles for that document to the ones where Normal paragraphs have single spacing with no extra space after paragraphs.
- To make this change effective for all new documents based on the Normal template, drop this menu down again, and choose Set as Default.
- Now, when you review your Paragraph dialog box, you’ll see this:
Ah! That's better!
Hat tip to the Microsoft Office Knowledge Base for this one.
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Well, this is the 3rd “can’t miss” instruction set I’ve tried on how to default all documents to single space. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work for me either. Followed all steps, closed Word, and when I re-opened Word the line spacing was set back to 1.15. I’m sure this works for others, but it just does not do the job on my Word 2010. The hunt for the solution goes on! Thanks anyway.
Right, Mel, I followed the directions many times and nothing changes. Why on earth would you not make single spacing the default, and if you did go down that road to nowhere, couldn’t you at least make your directions for changing it back WORK? Word 2010 is just plain dismal.
Well, I hate that this is not working for you. You might instead try the method recommended on Small City Law Firm Tech (http://vmanning.posterous.com/why-oh-why-wont-it-stick-changing-word-2010-f) – perhaps that will work better.
Thanks for this information. It worked perfectly for me.
Fantastic – glad it helped!
I tried it and it worked for me on the first try. Thanks.
Good – glad to see that method’s working well!
For many, this procedure becomes a challenge, because it doesn’t always work. I spent a long time trying everything I could think of to get a default for the Normal document that was different than Calibri/11/1.5 spacing. Here’s what worked for me. It is the location of the template that counts, not the properties of the template. I had to MOVE my modified template to c:\users\appdata\roaming\microsoft\templates. There was no Normal template in the folder, until I moved it there. This worked for me, and I hope it works for you.
Thanks – you’ve saved me from further heartburn!
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