When trying to widen or narrow the margins on a document, the way I do it is to slide those two tiny triangles that point at each other, at the top of the document.
Problem is, Microsoft requires that you to place your cursor exactly on a subatomic point–the point at which the tips of these triangles meet–and God help you if you veer off into Electron Land. Move the cursor just one angstrom too far this way or that and the adjustment can’t be made.
Is there any way to “desensitize” or otherwise simplify this process?
>>> BTW, what document “View” do most MS Word users use? I use the “Print Layout” view, but wonder if that’s typical.
You can also adjust the margins by:
File/Page Setup/Margins.
Or, intead of placing the cursor at the point where the two arrows meet (this will change the cursor to a double-headed arrow), put the cursor instead on the little box directly below the two arrows. The cursor stays normal (a large white arrow in my case) and you can click down on the small box and drag.
Actually, the triangles represent the paragraph indent, not the margin. There just happens to be no paragraph indent by default.
The margin is represented by the dark gray (while the text area is represented by the white ruler between the gray on the left and the gray on the right). So you are actually trying to grab the margin setting, which is difficult to do with the para indent markers in the way. Have you noticed that the right margin is easier to grab because there is only one arrow in the way?
So if you like the grab and drag method, here is a little work arround:
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Grab the bar below the bottom (upward-pointing) triangle on the left side. Drag that little bar to the right, both triangles will move.
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Now place your cursor over the that place where the gray bar ends and the white ruler begins. It’s easier to do now that the arrows are out of the way. Drag that to the desired location.
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Grab the bar below the bottom triangle and move the pair of triangels back over the gray/white border (to remove any para indent you created by moving the triangles in the first place).
Or, if you’re maticulous like me: File > Page Setup from the menu bar. Select the Margins tab in the resulting dialog box. Modify the values in the Margins fields to your liking.
And I, too, prefer the Print Layout view.
P.S. I always use Print Layout view, with the Show/Hide paragraph marks turned on - anything else confuses me immensely. I don’t know how people can work on a document without those marks showing!
I agree. I have them on at (nearly) all times.
Sometimes people here accidentally turn the marks on and then come screaming, “Help!!! There are all these dots and paragraphs and weird things showing up in my document and I can’t click on them and I can’t delete them, waaaaaaaahhhh!!!”
I find that there’s a lot more tolerance for double-clicking on the margin pointers (and entering the precise values you want in the resulting popup box) than for trying to drag them in the ruler.
If you’re in Print Layout view, just double-click in the gray area outside of either the horizontal or vertical margins. Another way to think of this is just beyond either of the top corners.