Tilde problem- please help

Question

Hello,

I'm printing up little cards for a friend's birthday using Word 2000. She wants to add tildes (~~~~~) at the top and bottom. Here's the funny thing: I can add 1 or 2 of them, but when I put in 3 or more, the tildes don't show up- instead, the entire line changes to a pattern like this: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

(Actually, it's not exactly the pattern above, but I don't know how to duplicate what's showing up. )

In other words, I want to do this:

~~~~~~~

But when I type in more than 2 tildes, the tildes suddenly change to another pattern that fills the entire line.

Any ideas? I would really appreciate any help on this- thanks very much.

Denny Denham · Answer

findtheriver,

I don't have Word 2000 but here are the instructions for Word XP (and they should work for 2000 as well).

Go to Format|AutoFormat. Click the "Options" button and on the AutoFormat As You Type tab uncheck "Built-in heading styles" under Apply as you type.

If that option is not available uncheck "Headings" under the Apply section of the AutoFormat tab (which is the display in Word 97). This may be what you have as Word XP convers a series of tildes to a horizontal bar rather that the serrated appearance you see.

findtheriver · Answer

Hi Denny,

Thanks very much for the suggestion and I apologize for the late acknowledgement. I re-installed my operating system because I was having so many problems (shut down, freezing, etc.) and really messed everything up. I'm just now getting back online.

The AutoFormat on ME doesn't seem to be the same as what you described. I tried clicking and unclicking and couldn't get it to work. I'm sure it's just something I'm doing wrong, so I'll give it another shot later today.

Thanks again.

joe_mcguire · Answer

You are running into a Word feature that, like many others, assumes it knows what you really want to do. It can be vexing when the assumption is wrong. Word assumes you want to make a line across the page from margin-to-margin when you enter a few characters followed by a Hard Return. It is actually a very nice feature, IMHO. The appearance of the line varies according to the specific character. The characters are the dash (- or _), =, #, * and ~. Here are two suggestions when you want only the few characters rather than a line.

You can turn off the feature in Word 2000. Go to Tools, AutoCorrect, and then to the tab Autoformat as you Type. If the box for Borders is checked, uncheck it. (If the box is already unchecked, forget this suggestion and try the next) This works on my machine with Word 2000, sort of toggling the line feature on and off.

Even simpler: Type a few tildes and then press the space bar before inserting a Hard Return. Instead of the space bar you can use the tab if you want.

findtheriver · Answer

Hi Joe,

Thanks very much for the suggestion- I just tried it and it works fine. And I agree with you about Word's "assumptions" as you're typing- once you get used to all these auto-corrections and auto-formats, it actually speeds things up quite a bit.

Much appreciated

Productivity Software

Tilde problem- please help

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