Where's text centering on Word's menus?

  • Thread starter Thread starter baobob
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B

baobob

I've only been using PCs since 1983, and d'ya think I can find Word
97's method via the menu to horizontally center text? I see nothing on
its Format menu.

Unbelievably, even the context menu (i.e. highlight the text to be
centered, then right-click or press Shift-F10) has no context-
sensitive formatting. (Nor--you guessed--does the Format menu).

Even Excel, which is a poor excuse for a word processor, has a text
Alignment dialog, for Chrissake.

Ya'd better answer me fast...I'm itching to dump on the Microsoft
propeller-heads again.

Yeah, I know, I oughta upgrade to a later Word. (Provided it's fixed.)

Thanks much.

***
 
Tough night? Word 97? There are icons on the task bar for Left-align,
Center, Right-align and Justify. The respective keyboard shortcuts are
CTRL+L, CTRL+E, CTRL+R, and CRTL+J. If the icons don't appear, right click
on the task bar and click on the appropriate option.

Where in the world did you ever get the notion that Excel is a Word
processor?

Ranting is fun...
 
Alignment is an attribute of a paragraph. Therefore, you select Paragraph
from the Format menu.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP
 
Ctrl+E will center a paragraph in any version, whether it's really Word 97
or 2007.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
Word uses the same icon for centering text as you see in Excel on the
Formatting toolbar and both applications use the same order for the initial
commands on the Formatting toolbar. (Granted Word includes the Styles combo
box at the beginning but after that first 8 are identical. Also note Excel
doesn't have a dedicated Alignment dialog box, it's on a tab in the
Format/Cells dialog box which isn't too different from Word. If you miss the
Formatting toolbar and apply similar logic to Word and click the Format menu
in Word you'll see Font and the next command is Paragraph. By process of
elimination it shouldn't take too long to discover the Center option in the
Paragraph dialog box.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email cannot be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Coauthor of Word 2007 Inside Out:
http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/9801.aspx#AboutTheBook

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/
 
Propeller-head prize: Myself, not Microsoft.

User error again.

Thanks to ALL who replied.

***

Charles: Yep, it WAS a tough night. Threatening to call MS's employees
propeller-heads is a sure sign of that.

But actually, Excel is quite a GOOD word processor. I don't know if
the world at large takes full advantage of this, but I almost always
use Excel if I've got heavily formatted text in blocks or columns.
Much easier (for me at least) to move stuff around than deal with
tables in Word, don'tcha know. And if you've got BULLETED text, why
you can adjust the bullet distance and do other nifty things. AND you
don't have to deal with Word's proto-A.I. automatic bulleting &
numbering, which I inevitably have to defeat in many circumstances.

And if you've got data dependencies, which I always seem have, then
you CANNOT beat Excel. About the only limitation (of importance to me,
at least) is that Excel's grasp of the printed page, and its resultant
paragraph wrap and the like, can indeed differ slightly from the
printer driver's, and you occasionally gotta make a row a cell smaller
or larger in height accordingly. But I can live with that. I mean,
Excel HAS text wrapping. So I think Excel is just EXCELlent--even when
not using it's numeric functionality. Yet ya've got that too.

Doug: Strangely, about the only thing I've ever centered in my brief
24-year microcomputing career is a one- or multi-line title, rarely a
paragraph. Ergo my mind blocked out checking the Paragraph menu item's
dialog. Duh.

Suzanne: Thanks for the shortcut, Ctrl-E. As a keystroke maven, I
should've known it. But did I? No-o-o-o.

Beth: Yeah, my empirical method was a joke. I only checked Format's
main menu level. I'll make sure I have a coupla glasses of wine next
time I try to find something empirically.

Thanks again all.

***
 
LOL Loved your responses and glad you have it sorted, or would that be
"centered"? :-)

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email cannot be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
 
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