WD97: Horizontal Lines Display With Different Widths

• Microsoft Word 97 for Windows

SYMPTOMS

Some horizontal lines expand the width of the display window and appear to be left-aligned, while other horizontal lines appear to be centered and have a fixed width of 6.5 inches. This problem occurs when formatting web pages.

CAUSE

The horizontal line inserted by using the Horizontal Line button or the first line style in the Horizontal Line dialog box, is centered in the document but expands the width of the document window, giving it the appearance of being left aligned.

The graphical line styles, beginning with the second line style in the Horizontal Line dialog box, are GIF images that have a fixed length.

By default all horizontal lines are formatted with the Align=center attribute.

WORKAROUND

To work around the problem, choose one of the following methods:

Method 1. Use the same style for all horizontal lines on your web page.

Method 2. Modify the HTML source and change the HR tag attributes so that

          they resemble the attributes of the IMG SRC tag used by the
          graphical lines.

          For example, if the tag for the graphical line looks like this:

             <IMG SRC Align="Center" Width=575 Height=10>

          change the HR tag so that it looks like this:

             <HR Align="Center" Width=575 Height=10>

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Word 97 for Windows. We are researching this problem and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.