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 PowerPointÂ
- Navigate to Start –> Programs –> Microsoft Office –> Microsoft Office Tools –> Microsoft Office Language Settings
- Add Japanese (don’t ask why, just do it)Â
- 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!
Oh man, this works great for Word 2007 – thank you so very, very much!
This works for Word 2010 too. I just had to go to “paragraph” settings>”Asian Typography” tab to find the box. Thank you so much!
Thank you!! I gave my twenty-five page paper (MS Word) a final review on my Droid tablet using the Polaris app which I was told was compatible with Word. It completely wrecked my formatting and added section and page breaks in the oddest spots. The wrapping of words on every single page was unbelievable!
This trick worked very well.
Thanks again!
Blessed. Thank you
and the worse thing is, I’ve been working on this project for about a week and never had any word wrap issues, all my sentences went down to the next line when they reached the end of the page!?? then I had to paste a text file into PPT, and all of a sudden it decides not to word wrap
grrrrr they should let us edit our comments…. ok so I found SLIDE OUTLINE VIEW but the OTHER two boxes were squared, Latin was still unchecked AND unsquared!?? I tried it 1) with all my text selected 2) none of my text selected and 3) a BLANK, NEW slide… no word wrap action
you guys are all messing with me… not funny, this is getting really annoying, the programs been out for 6 yrs now… NO WORD WRAP UPDATE!?? its a conspiracy for sure… killin me! every one a ya!
oh, almost forgot… when I went to SLIDE MASTER the OTHER two boxes were checked off, but not the Latin one. But when I switched out of MASTER and back to MY own slide, NONE of the boxes were checked off.
uhh.. is this a joke or what? My “Latin American wrap” wasnt checked off in the first place, so I checked it and nothing happened, so I went back to UNcheck it but it was already unchecked. (It seems to default and also automatically uncheck as soon as I click OK)… Then I get to Thomas’ comment about “go to Slide Outline view to select all the text..” what does that mean? Where is SLIDE OUTLINE VIEW, and how do I select all the text from it? been messing with it for awhile and the box is never checked.
But if this ISNT a joke… ALL you guys unchecked this box then suddenly all your sentences word wrapped?? my sentences are still a mile long
Thank you, thank you and thank you!!! Precious advice! <3
Thank you! This was soooo helpful!
Thanks a million. How can they make something so annoying so hard to find? Top instructions…
Wonderful! Thanks so much for sharing this!
great. it works perfectly. thank you so much!
Thanks for sharing. Very annoying when strange behaviour starts happening seemingly randomly!
If you get to the Slide Master’s Line Spacing settings and find “Allow latin text to wrap in the middle of a word” is already unchecked, it may be set on specific text in the slides themselves which overrides this setting in the slide master. That’s what happened to me at least…
To fix, go to Slide Outline view where you should be able to select all the text across all slides, then go to paragraph settings -> Asian Typography -> Allow latin text etc. It will appear as a square at first – just click until it’s unticked.
Great solution. It worked for me. I wonder why they don’t have this option in English line spacing.
Thanks!
This happened to me because the original PPT was created in Asian (South Korean actually). So, Once I installed the Asian language I could find the issue. Going to the Master slide didn’t work though as these were correct.
Wow! This trick is an absolute godsend. Thanks!
Thank you! You saved my presentation for school!!!!
this has helped me – saved me a ton of time
thanks
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
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!
Thanks a ton. Works on office 2010 as mentioned in an earlier post (ironically just today) by Craig.
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…)
@ 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.
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.
I would never have figured this out. So glad you posted these instructions. Thanks!
thanks for this.
It works!
Thank you!
Well it’s the start of another year (2011) and this help is still going strong. THANK YOU!
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
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
Hats off for researching for the soution… Microsoft online help is useless..
Thank you thank you thank you!
rofl @ alex
i cant believe how useless MS help files are.
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.
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.
Many thanks for the tip!
I wonder if Microsoft workers also struggling with words cut in the middle.. 🙂
@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!
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.
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.
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.
I can only say “THANK YOU!” The post is absolutely great.
Greatly appreciated. Keep up the good work.
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!
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.
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?
@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!
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.
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!
“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.
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