UNHCE Information Technology & Distance Education Blog

Source: WordTips by DCI

If you place an object--such as a text box--at the left side of a
page, and then wrap text around that object, you can create some
interesting layouts. You can also be faced with a great deal of
frustration because normal text wraps very nicely around the object,
but some text doesn't behave like you would expect.

For instance, if you have paragraphs formatted with hanging indents,
those paragraphs won't display properly to the right of the object.
The reason for this is quite simple, really. When you place the object
in the document, Word doesn't change the margins for the page. Thus,
if you have an object that is one inch wide, and the hanging indent is
only one-half inch, then the half-inch point actually is in the middle
of the object. Word, seeing that the hang distance is to the left of
where the text wraps, ignores it completely; it does not treat the
text as if the left margin were to the right of the object.

So how do you get the text to actually indent properly when wrapping
at the right of an object? There is no easy or completely satisfactory
way to do it. One approach is to adjust the margins for the page so
that they go to the right of the text box. When you push the margins
over, Word handles hanging indents properly for the page. Of course,
changing the margins isn't terribly helpful for the parts of your
document below the text box, where you would want the margins to again
revert farther to the left.

Another approach is to place another text box on the page, this one to
the right of the object around which you were wrapping. You can then
place your text in the text box, and the hanging indents work fine.
The drawback here, of course, is that if your text runs longer than
what will fit in the text box, you need to somehow transition back to
"regular" text that isn't in the text box--not the easiest of
transitions to make.

Another solution, if you use styles, is to create special styles that
you use the hanging indent paragraphs that are beside wrapped objects.
For instance, if the wrapped object is a "placeholder" for a
letterhead, it is two inches wide, and it runs down the full left side
of the first page, then you could create hanging indent styles that
add two inches to the left indent of the paragraph. Apply the style to
the paragraphs, and the hanging will appear to be proper in relation
to the object being wrapped.