PowerPoint Word Wrap – Splitting Words Down the Middle
This one drove me crazy for a while…and the solution is even wilder. So hopefully, this will help someone.
If you are working on PowerPoint slides and you find that your words are somehow splitting onto new lines, you can follow the below steps to correct this.
- Close PowerPoint
- Navigate to Start –> Programs –> Microsoft Office –> Microsoft Office Tools –> Microsoft Office Language Settings
- Add Japanese (don’t ask why, just do it)
- Navigate to the slide master. Navigate to Line Spacing (or Line Breaks) in your menu (or ribbon)
- You will notice a tab for Asian Language support. Uncheck the second check-box (Allow Latin text to wrap in the middle of a word).
- You’re all set.
- Navigate to Start –> Programs –> Microsoft Office –> Microsoft Office Tools –> Microsoft Office Language Settings and remove Japanese if you’d like.
Good luck!
This post is absolutlety mind blowing! I can’t believe that it actually works, but it does. You have saved me from even more frustration. I had been using Office 2007 for several weeks and all of my Power Point files that had text blocks were screwed up with the whole “letter” wrapping problem.
Thanks Again,
Rick
Comment by rkehler — September 21, 2007 @ 8:14 am
“This post is absolutlety mind blowing!”
I’m not sure if “mind blowing” was a desired or anticipated result, but I am going to take it in a good way. I’m certainly glad this helped you — I tend to believe for the one person that posts a thank you, another 10-100 people were benefited, so thank you for taking the time.
Comment by Ashok Aggarwal — September 23, 2007 @ 1:09 am
Wow! I just searched for word wrap and knew that Microsoft was not going to have an answer to this simple question. Your listing was next on the google search results list. YOU KNOCKED IT OUT OF THE PARK! Sorry for screaming but I never get this lucky…. what am I going to do with the next 1.5 hours that you saved me searching for the real fix! This is awesome… pass it on… I can’t imagine how such a fundamental function can be so hard to turn back on…. Oh us poor users! Thanks for you gift!
Comment by nnolan — October 9, 2007 @ 6:15 pm
I know I must be overlooking something extremely obvious here, but .… Once I get to step 4. and I’ve re-opened the Slide Master, how do I navigate to Line Spacing (in PowerPoint 2007)? If I select some paragraph text and choose the Paragraph context menu which brings me to Line Spacing, there are no Asian Language Tabs. I can’t see any other way to navigate to line spacing options (or Line Break) options. As usual PowerPoint Help is opaque.
Any help gratefully appreciated.
Comment by Rod Whiteley — October 29, 2007 @ 11:37 pm
@Rod Whiteley
Just select the text in the slide master, right click, and select Paragraph…
If you don’t see the “Asian Typography” tab, you probably didn’t perform the previous steps properly. I don’t think I can really provide more help than that, but maybe someone else will comment further if they noticed something similar.
Good luck!
Comment by Ashok Aggarwal — October 30, 2007 @ 12:17 am
I have a related text-wrapping problem I first observed on Powerpoint in Office 2008 for Macintosh. May be trivial, but I can’t “wrap” my brain around it.
For some reason when a word is wrapped to the next line in a text box, the space preceding the word is also wrapped and remains in front of it leaving an indent and thus not a straight margin.
Clues for clueless?
Comment by swampy — June 7, 2008 @ 11:54 am
I got a template produced in korean in Powerpoint 2003 and tried to use it in Powerpoint 2007. Even though I had Korean languate support in 2007 I found no facilities to remove ‘latin style word wrap’. So all English words were merciless cut at the end of line.
I had to go back to PP 2003, correct the problem as outlined above, and then using the PP templates in PP 2007.
Comment by martinysteen — March 14, 2009 @ 12:33 pm
I have seen some weird Microsoft things in my time, but this tops all. Thanks for the time you put into describing this fix so that the rest of us could use our time doing profitable work! Also, thanks to Google for putting your fix right at the top of the list!
Comment by Bryan — May 17, 2010 @ 6:37 pm
I can only say “THANK YOU!” The post is absolutely great.
Greatly appreciated. Keep up the good work.
Comment by Rupnarayan Bose — June 12, 2010 @ 9:20 pm
I may have been a bit too quick in posting my feedback. Sadly, I did everything exactly as directed; repeated the process thrice. Yet, it does not work.
Have I gone wrong somewhere? Have I missed something?
Help greatly appreciated.
Comment by Rupnarayan Bose — June 12, 2010 @ 9:34 pm
This really worked. I don’t know how much time I had spent before this using “hard rights” and other tricks to get the text to line up properly.
Comment by Roland Halpern — June 30, 2010 @ 2:56 pm
This also works for Outlook. When composing a message, word wrap happens at the end of the line, regardless of spacing. It’s correct when the message is sent, but it makes it hard to proof read. Setting ‘Japanese’ (other Asian languages might work too) enables a third tab on the Paragraph format pop-up, which has the Latin word wrap option. (Who would set this option as the default? Only Microsoft!)
Unfortunately, in Outlook it reverts back to the default for every new message, but at least now there’s a three-click option to change it. Thanks for the tip.
Comment by Clay Olmstead — July 15, 2010 @ 3:55 pm
@Rupnarayan Bose
Do you still have an issue? Not sure I have any time to really help you, but maybe you can provide some details and others who visit this blog can provide input.
@Everyone
I’m glad this is still helping people over 3 years later and thank you for adding additional tips!
Comment by Ashok Aggarwal — July 15, 2010 @ 4:28 pm
Many thanks for the tip!
I wonder if Microsoft workers also struggling with words cut in the middle..
Comment by Alex — July 23, 2010 @ 7:20 am
No, Outlook stopped reverting to the default after two or three times, and it hasn’t been a problem since. I could probably turn off the Japanese setting now, but there’s no need. Thanks for the help, that problem was driving me nuts.
Comment by Clay Olmstead — August 25, 2010 @ 11:08 pm
This really helped me. The word splitting was driving me crazy and the microsoft online help is useless. This fix got me out of my misery… Thanks a bunch.
Comment by Vijay — September 12, 2010 @ 1:49 am
rofl @ alex
i cant believe how useless MS help files are.
Comment by Ryan — October 23, 2010 @ 9:46 am
Thank you thank you thank you!
Comment by Mr V — November 15, 2010 @ 6:58 pm
Hats off for researching for the soution… Microsoft online help is useless..
Comment by Suresh — November 30, 2010 @ 8:44 pm
Dear Mr. Aggarwal.
Thank you very much for saving me from my endless frustration. Thought there would be no light to this until I stumble onto your post. Extremely helpful and appreciate the advice given.
Wish you’ll excel in everything you do!
CL
Comment by CL — December 10, 2010 @ 9:31 am
When all the logic answers are proven wrong, one has to try the not so logical ones… thanks a lot for posting this, I’m sure even having like 12 years using MS Office, I wasn’t going to be able to solve this myself.
Carlos – countrycode 52
Comment by Carlos dv — January 11, 2011 @ 12:58 am
Well it’s the start of another year (2011) and this help is still going strong. THANK YOU!
Comment by Fran D — January 13, 2011 @ 1:37 pm
It works!
Thank you!
Comment by Emil — January 21, 2011 @ 5:18 am
thanks for this.
Comment by bob — April 8, 2011 @ 5:16 am
I would never have figured this out. So glad you posted these instructions. Thanks!
Comment by Todd — April 24, 2011 @ 4:50 pm
Wow! I am so happy this worked…I thought I was going to have to recreate several HUGE presentations. Changing in the Master slide didn’t work for me…I had to select all the text in each box and then go into the paragraph menu to uncheck the “Allow Latin text to wrap in the middle of a word” box.
Comment by PNichols — May 23, 2011 @ 6:12 pm
@ everyone,
Still glad this is helping people…I wonder, do any of you actually follow my blog regularly or read other articles I post?
Feel free to subscribe at:
http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=MrAggarwal.
Who knows, if you aren’t already, you might like other things I write about.
Comment by Ashok Aggarwal — May 27, 2011 @ 6:50 pm
Just did it, it worked for 2010… I’m laughing my fool head off here – I’m in ASIA yet!!
How can Microsoft DO this??
( Added bonus, I now know about slide masters, which I should’ve found out about before being let loose on the s/w package anyway…)
Comment by Craig — June 16, 2011 @ 7:09 am
Thanks a ton. Works on office 2010 as mentioned in an earlier post (ironically just today) by Craig.
Comment by A — June 16, 2011 @ 9:05 pm
Thanks Mr Aggarwal and Clay Olmstead (for the Outlook solution). My Outlook 2007 just started doing this after 2 years normal use and of course MS “Help” was irrelevant. How you actually worked this out I don’t know but it sure is appreciated!
Comment by Mark D — June 22, 2011 @ 12:29 pm
Thanks mate! I was searching for how to enable word wrap in notes in power point and stumbled across your excellent post.
I got lost at step 4. ‘navigate to line spacing’, but with a bit of experimentation figured it out. For anyone who runs into the same issue, this is what I did:
* Opened up power point presentation I was working on
* Right clicked on notes box under the slide
* Clicked on ‘paragraph’
* Clicked on ‘Asian Typography’ tab
* Unchecked the second check-box (Allow Latin text to wrap in the middle of a word) as per your original instructions.
Instant text wrapping! Might actually meet my client’s deadline now.
Thanks again mate!
Socratesk
Comment by Socratesk — July 5, 2011 @ 8:22 am