Weird text spacing in Publisher

[Sarah Ripley]

Hi there.

I'm just starting with Publisher; not much experience in this type of software so i'm assuming I've stuffed up somewhere.  I 'placed' text  from a .docx into my publisher doc.  The docx was all formatted with headings etc but when it went into my text boxes I've got some very weird spacing between paragraphs!  the text flows to the end of the page, and then in *some* (but not all) follow on pages the text starts randomly down the next text box.  It's not always at the same insertion point - can be anything from quite near the top to 3/4 of the way down the box. Anybody got any ideas?

Thank you :-)

 

[firstdefence]

You can show the special (hidden characters) that control things like line breaks by going to Text > Show Special Characters main menu at the top of the affinity app 

Seeing the special characters in the screen shots will help us work your issue out.

[Sarah Ripley]

Ok, I have 'unhidden' the special characters.  Here's what I see... a lot of nothing :-(

Thanks for looking at this for me!

[Joachim_L]

The original document posted here would be helpful.

[Sarah Ripley]

To be honest, I got so frustrated with it I junked it and started again.  All seems absolutely fine this time round!!!

 

Thank you for your time :-)

[Joachim_L]

10 minutes ago, Sarah Ripley said:

Thank you for your time :-)

No problem. Interesting would be, what was the difference to your first try?

[Sarah Ripley]

I'd guess there was something very odd going on.  Some of the text in the docx file was copied from a Pages document.  Bizarrely enough, there seemed to be an 'invisible' image carried over with it!  What I mean by that, is the thumb nail for the docx file showed a picture (that WAS in the Pages file) but when the DocX file was opened - no image to be seen!  Also, my number paragraphs were strangely formatted too.   So, I'd guess that there was some other rogue formatting hiding in the docx file along with that image - all carried over from the Pages doc.

To fix it I cut/pasted all my text from the original docx file I wanted to use, into a NEW docx file, saved then put it into Publisher - and, bingo, it all worked after that.  No more hidden images or weird formatting.  I think it was swapping between word processing apps on my Mac that threw a spanner in the works.

So, all sorted now  (I hope!!)

[Joachim_L]

To remove the extra step copying the text into a new Word file: Copy the text from your Word document and in Publisher use the menu Edit -> Paste Without Format. Maybe this is a bit quicker.

[Sarah Ripley]

Oh!  I didn't know about that!  Thank you  That's does sound quicker.  Will do that next time.

[firstdefence]

I've just read another post where the OP was getting big spaces, he discovered it was due to invisible image placeholders; or the residual remains of an invisible placeholder after the image was removed. This is the post, added for reference purposes.

 

[GRH]

I have found the best way for me is to nuke the document in a plain text editor like Note Pad or Note Pad++. That way I don't get any hidden control codes etc., corrupting the text.

[Sarah Ripley]

That's a good idea too.  Thanks