Removing Space Before Paragraphs

You know that Word allows you to control exactly how much space appears before and after a paragraph. (Display the Paragraph dialog box and then use the Before and After settings to make your specifications.) If you have quite a bit of formatting to do, and you need to remove space that someone else has set before paragraphs, you may be interested in this tip.

Word includes a handy toolbar button you can use to automatically remove space before paragraphs. In other words, it sets the Before value in the Paragraph dialog box to zero. This tool is available in versions of Word through Word 2003; it is not available in Word 2007. You can add this tool to your toolbar by following these steps:

1. Choose Customize from the Tools menu. Word displays the Customize dialog box.
2. Make sure the Commands tab is selected. (Click here to see a related figure.)
3. In the list of Categories, choose All Commands.
4. In the list of Commands, choose CloseUpPara.
5. Use the mouse to drag CloseUpPara from the Commands list to its new location on the toolbar. When you release the mouse button, the icon for the command appears on the toolbar.
6. Click on Close to dismiss the Customize dialog box.