custom page size quirk in Word 97

[John Lilly <jlilly -at- idcomm -dot- com>]

I thought I'd share a quirk in Word 97 that I just discovered. If you
use the custom page size feature (File | Page Setup | Paper Size), you
are probably used to entering the width and height of the page you want
to use. Well, if you make only minor changes to the width or height
values, your change will NOT take effect.

For example, let's say the width for the whole document is set to 7.4
inches and the height is set to 9.25 inches. You then change the width
for the document to 7.5 inches and click OK. When you reopen the Page
Setup dialog box, you will see that the width is still set to 7.4
inches; Word did not accept your change. If you change it from 7.4
inches to 7.6 inches, Word still does not recognize the change. 

I'm not sure exactly how big of a change you must make, but it seems to
be more than .2 inches. So to get that 7.5 inch width, you'd first have
to change the width to, say, 8 inches, save it, and then bump it down to
7.5 inches and save it again. 

The same is true for minor changes to the height value. Word does not
tell you that it rejected your new value, you have to go back and
confirm that the change was made.

I hope this helps.

-John Lilly (digest recipient)
Senior Technical Writer
Parametric Technology Corp.