Tab stop "too large"

[Ann Hauer]

When attempting to clear or modify the tab stops in a paragraph style in
Word 98 I get a dialogue box that says "Tab stops too large." Heck, I was
trying to clear them, so how can they be too large? This "error" occurs no
matter how I try to change tabs. Word Help is no help; doesn't say a thing
about this.

Anyone out there know what's going on?

Don Rowe
Stillwater, MN

[John McGhie [MVP]]

Hi Don:

Jeez, we're going to be feeling our way a bit here!

That error means that a tab stop has been created outside of Word's
printable area.

This probably means that the style is corrupt, and if it is, the template is
likely to be corrupt. Let's see if we can recover:

1) Assuming the document is valuable, we need to replace the style.

1) Try using Organiser to copy a fresh copy of the style from the template.

That may not fix the problem: Word may "update" the document style instead
of overwriting it.

If it didn't fix the problem, try this:

1) Use Find/Replace to find all instances of that style and replace it with
a different style. It doesn't matter which other style. We must change the
style. Renaming it won't do the job.

2) Use Organiser to delete the bad style from the document.

3) Use Organiser to copy the style back in from the template.

4) Use Find/Replace to re-apply the style to the text changed previously.

Now, there is a chance that THAT won't work either. Which means that either
the template or the document is corrupt.

If so, I would not stuff around with it much more. I would make a record of
the properties of the styles and re-create the template, then save the
document out to plain text and reformat it from the new template.

To make a record of the styles, use File>Print>Microsoft Word. This will
reveal a "Print What" option: choose Styles.

Hope this helps

On 13/12/01 6:08 AM, in article B83CEB29.235%aha...@salaarc.com, "Ann Hauer"
<aha...@salaarc.com> wrote:

--
Please post replies to the newsgroup to maintain the thread.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP: Word for Macintosh and Word for Windows
Consultant Technical Writer
<jo...@mcghie-information.com.au>
+61 4 1209 1410; Sydney, Australia: GMT + 10 hrs