Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of Sulli1
Sulli1Flag for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

asked on

How do I type in the margin of my MS Word document?

Hi there,
I am trying to type a legal report for my boss at the moment and he wants to to type document references in the right hand margin of the document - is this possible?  Or would this have to be done as an invisible table/column?  This document is rather urgent so any help available would be truly appreciated.

Thank you,

Sulli1
Avatar of Brian Pierce
Brian Pierce
Flag of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland image

You can insert a text box in the margin any type in that - Insert->Text Box
Avatar of Sulli1

ASKER

Hi,
Thanks for your reply.  I meant to say, my document is a 60 page report and I need to put references in on the right hand margin every few lines - would there be another way I could maybe do this?

Thanks again for your help

Sulli1
not that I can think of.
You can indent paragraphs to move  them (or part of them into a margin).

Left indenting a paragraph by a large amount will move its left hand edge towards the right.
Right indenting the paragraph by a negative amount will allow it to expand into the margin.

Try left indent of 16 cm and right indent of -5 cm
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Eric Fletcher
Eric Fletcher
Flag of Canada image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
I can't see how these suggestions are going to make it easy to add notes in the margin alongside existing text.

What you could condiser, and I admit its not without its drawbacks is that you create a document with a narrow left margin and then use a two column table with a narrow 'margin sized' left column and a wide right comumn (hide the table gridlines so they don't print).

You can then put the main document in the wide column and notes in the right column - you may have to put in a lot of 'returns' in the righthand column to get the notes alongside the text but it will work in a fashion.
KCTS: adding a paragraph and applying a style is a whole lot easier than setting up a text box or fiddling with document-wide margins. You can set up a toolbar button to apply the style to make it even easier.

Sulli1: Another advantage of using the style method is that you can then delete or hide the side notes. To delete them all, just use Find for the style (Format, Style in Find dialog) and Replace tehm with nothing. To hide them, just modify the style so the font is hidden.
How can you get two paragraphs alongside each other ? eg

                        ssdsd  sd s ds ds ds ds d sd s dsdsdsdsdsdsd  sd sd s ds d sd sdsd
                        dghsg hsg hg dhfdhh dkhfk dhfd kdhfkdh dhf dhfkdhfkdhf kkdfkdk kdk
     First Note    hdjhdh dhf hdhf hdhfh hdhf ssdsd  sd s ds ds ds ds d sd s
     goes here   dsdsdsdsdsdsd  sd sd s ds d sd sdsd

                        dghsg hsg hg dhfdhh dkhfk dhfd kdhfkdh dhf dhfkdhfkdhf kkdfkdk kdk
     another       hdjhdh dhf hdhf hdhfh hdhf ssdsd  sd s ds ds ds ds d sd s dsdsdsdsdsdsd  
     note            sd sd s ds d sd sdsd dghsg hsg hg dhfdhh dkhfk dhfd kdhfkdh dhf dhfkdhfkdhf
                        hdjhdh dhf hdhf hdhfh hdhf

Can this be done with styles ?
                           
Yes. Use the procedure I described above. The side notes will be aligned with the top of the following paragraph.
I bow to your superior knowlegde, If it were my question I'd give you the points !
Actually, I wonder whether the 'Comments' facility would suit you.

Select the body text to be annotated, the do Insert/Comment. Type the text for your comment into the 'balloon' in the right-hand document margin. The cursor will have already been placed there automatically.
Avatar of Sulli1

ASKER

Thank you all for your comments.  

I have successfully used Erics suggestion for this one, so am going to give him the points.
 
Thank you all for being so helpful.

Sulli1