WD2000: Horizontal Lines Are Displayed with Different Widths (211987)

SYMPTOMS

Some horizontal lines expand to the width of the display window or document margin and appear to be left-aligned. Other horizontal lines appear to be centered and have a fixed width of 6.5-inches.

NOTE: The width of the horizontal line may appear to be larger or smaller than 6.5 inches in Word. Its width may adjust to the width of the Word window and the Zoom setting being used.

CAUSE

The horizontal line inserted by using the Horizontal Line button or the first line style in the Horizontal Line dialog box is centered in the document but expands the width of the document window, giving it the appearance of being left-aligned.

The graphical line styles, beginning with the second line style in the Horizontal Line dialog box, are GIF images that have a fixed length.

By default, all horizontal lines are formatted with the Align=center attribute.

WORKAROUND

To work around the problem, do the following steps:

Click to select the horizontal line in your document.
On the Format menu, click Horizontal Line.
On the Horizontal Line tab, change the width to the size you want.

NOTE: To change the horizontal line to the size you want, you can change the Width box or the Measure in box, or you can change both boxes. For example, to change the width of the horizontal line to be a percentage of the width of the page, change the Measure in box to Percent.
Click OK.

MORE INFORMATION

To insert a horizontal line, do one of the following:

On the Format menu, click Borders and Shading. On the Borders tab, click Horizontal Line. In the Horizontal Line dialog box, click to select the horizontal line you want to use and then click OK.

-or-
On the Tables and Borders toolbar, click the border button down arrow and click to select Horizontal Line.

To view the Tables and Borders toolbar, point to Toolbars on the View menu and click to select Tables and Borders.