Graham Mayor

... helping to ease the lives of Microsoft Word users.


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What are those strange ruler measurements?

Sometimes Word pops up with strange units of measurement which clutter the ruler with tiny divisions that bear no relationship to the preferred measurements set in Tools > Options > General. These are known as character units.

Character units above - centimeters required below:

This is an undesirable aspect of the Asian languages compatibility - undesirable for non-Asian languages that is. Fortunately the issue is soon fixed.

Press ALT+F11. This opens the macro editor. Press CTRL+G (View > Immediate Window). This provides a 'chat' window in which you can type vba code to be executed immediately. In that window, type

Options.UseCharacterUnit = False

and press the enter key.

Job done! You can now close the macro editor and return to Word, where you will find your chosen measurement option set - here centimeters.

 

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Character Units

This page only just made the cut to the new site as it applies primarily to Word 2002 and 2003 versions, and frankly it has been a while since I have seen the issue raised so it may have been fixed ... though somehow I doubt it.