My MS Word document is set for single spacing but, changes to double spacing by itself sometimes. Help pse?

Question

Sometimes while I'm typing a letter or lists in an MS Word Document, the line spacing for some reason changes over to double spacing by itself. If I highlight the double spacing and go to "format" to change it back to single spacing, it shows that it IS set for single spacing!

Answer 1

If you are running Office 2007 make sure you have your "Style" set correctly.

Answer 2

If you're seeing the double-spacing only after a paragraph rather than within it, you probably have some After spacing attached to that paragraph style.  Here's how to fix that in Word versions prior to Word 2007 (Vista):

1. Click in a paragraph this happens to.

2. Click on the Format->Styles and Formatting menu item.

3. In the bottom part of the sidebar that pops up, the style for your paragraph should have a bold box around it.

4. Hover the cursor over the style. A listbox arrow should appear. Click it.

5. Select Modify from the list box.

6. Click the Format button and select Paragraph.

7. Make sure the Before and After combo boxes contain zeroes.

8. OK out of everything.

All paragraphs in the document with that style should adjust themselves.

Now, if you want to carry this one step further and fix the style on the template your document is based on (probably Normal.dot, but not necessarily), do this:

1. Click the Tools->Organizer menu item.

2. In the left-hand list box, find and click on the style you changed.

3. Click the Copy button between the two list boxes.

4. Click OK.

When you close your document, you may see a warning message asking if you want to save the changes to Normal.dot. This is an anti-virus measure, intended to alert you that something has changed in Normal.dot. In this case, you made the change, so you want to accept it.

That should do it.