Windows Vista
Microsoft Word 2003 SP3

I've a 298 page word doc which was created by:
a) scanned into a PDF document
b) using Abbyy FineReader Optical Character Recognition OCR software I turned it into a Word Doc

Now, the problem is that while the majority of the Word Doc has paper set to LETTER sized, some pages are HUGE, and some are small.

I've gone to File / Page Setup and tried to reset it buy I always get an error... it says that "settings you chose for the left and right margins column spacing or paragraph indents are too large"

I want to force the whole document to be on letter sized paper, and all with the same margins.

Is there some control that I can do that will force the changes?

Is the information so secretive you wouldn't want anyone here to read it? If not, I do a lot of Word doc repair, if you can post it or email it to me I will see if I can convert to a single format for you.

I've uploaded it to my webserver... you can find the 2 files here:


FairfieldGeneology - first half word doc

Fairfield Genealogy - second half world doc


If you're able to help, that's GREAT!

My email is ParkerFairfield AT gmail DOT com

Appreciate the effort.

Dude, I have no idea what you've got here!

Well, the text inside the docs requires an unholy amount of editing. I suppose you know that already.

My suggestion is going to be to cut-n-paste the data from the original scanned docs into a fresh new doc, using the PASTE SPECIAL function to paste it as UNFORMATTED TEXT. This will strip out all formatting info including the nasty page resizings that have the doc virtually locked.

I'd suggest you do it a section at a time and do your edits at the same time, this way you only go through each section/few pages once. Cut-n-paste-unformatted text, then edit the new section in the new doc putting back in the formatting you want and correcting typos.

Does this make sense?

I could do one BIG cut-n-paste for you, but you've got pictures here and there to deal with, too, etc. So I suggest you do it a section at a time under your own eye.

Yeah I'm pretty good at Word. Call me advanced user at least. The solution u suggest is what I am doing as I cannot find another way.

I am hoping that someone with scan conversion experience can help.

I've thought about special paste as unformtted and then pasting in the images.

There you go. The scans resulted in errors on every single line. Not good.

I've never seen a Word Doc where I couldn't select all and reformat the entire doc to a new page style. This was a new one!

The problem is this document has multiple section breaks with different page sizes. You probably need to find those breaks and remove them. I suggest viewing the doc in Normal view, not page layout. That will make it easier to find the breaks.

Scott, that worked beautifully! I always forget the benefits of using normal view.

Anyway, I was able to merge the two docs into one in Letter layout and it's on it's way to you, Parker.

I normally prefer page layout view, buit I found Normal view was the best way to write my book. I also like to keep paragraph marks and tabs displayed so it easier to see where formatting starts and ends.