I would try copying them and pasting into word 2007 and tell it to save the source formatting. That may work. If you haven't done that right click on the little icon that appears at the end of the pasted text and click on 'save source formatting' on the drop down menu. May not work but worth a try.

I think as Bob note you might be better to save it as a text (.txt) file in Word. If the fails then try using Notepad (click Start, Accessories, Notepad. Once you have the data on your computer then you can try finding a way with suitable formatting.

Thanks, both of you, for your suggestions. Saving the source formatting didn't help, so I tried "match destination formatting" instead. That did move the words out of the margins, but it left those margins much too large. Perhaps because the original files were in Courier, and Times New Roman is my default font in Word. But, if I change it back to Courier, all of the problems return.

I also tried "keep text only," but it seemed to have the same results as "match destination formatting." I also clicked on the paragraph symbol that shows all the background stuff, and there appear to be a lot of dotted lines in these documents that I don't recall seeing in any of my regular Word documents. Is there any way to get rid of those?

(As these files are already saved on my computer as text files, saving one again in Notepad didn't help.)

Might be far out but you might take a screen shot of the docs and save em that way.

I see I forgot to mention that these files were saved years ago, so I don't have the originals to copy from. Just the messed-up text files, which is why I am trying to straighten them out. As they are manuscripts, I can't actually use them unless they look professional. So I may have to end up retyping them--unless I can figure out some less time-consuming alternative.

You mentioned about the difference in fonts. Try to reset your fonts in Word to Courier before bringing in the original files. Basically, you can set the type of font and font size as default in Word.

Here's how you can reset your default font and size to match with your original documents: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/291291.

Hope that helped.

Thanks, but that didn't work either. The text will line up correctly if I use a very small Courier font size--about 10--and very large margins. But that wouldn't be appropriate for manuscripts.

Audrey, can you just adjust the margins in Word after you import the text? (Page Layout > Margins)

"I don't have the originals to copy from. Just the messed-up text files"

That's the key piece of information.

When you saved as text, you lost all formatting. Since you don't have the originals, you'll need to manually format the text.

yOU MIGHT WANT TO TRY THIS IF YOU HAVE THE FILE ALREADY COPid then copy again and go to EDIT
Choose
PASTE SPECIAL

then choose
UNFORMATTED TEXT then enter
This should paste the item in the format of your word.
Save as a Word doc. Since I found this feature last year I use it all the time hope this helps

Thanks, but that left the large margins too. I think I'm just going to have to resign myself to retyping everything--when I find the time. A lot of it probably needs revised anyway. But thanks for trying, everybody!

Ive just seen this thread and was scratching my head for a bit then I remembered when I up dated my laptop to office 2007 I had to download office compatibility pack so it could open certain files I had saved using office 2002.

Hope this helps.

Paddy..

Here is a link that might be useful: Office compatibility pack