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When I am editing a Word document, which contains images, I need to break a paragraph, so that the image stays at the top of the page, instead of allowing the intervening image (or table for that matter) being pushed down by the overflowing text. When this happens, I need to break the paragraph at the bottom of a page and then copy and paste the rest of the paragraph into the text after the image. However, when I do this the last line of the broken paragraph does not justify to the right even though I do the recommended command, which is the pressing of command + J. Moreover, solutions given for Word for Windows do not work either, like pressing ctrl + shift + J or Shift + Return. To better illustrate the problem, please check a similar question at the SuperUser site, whose solution does NOT work on Word for Mac. How do I then justify the last line of a broken paragraph in Word for Mac?

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  • Just have the text flow around the image. Afix the image to whatever spot you like. If you have a caption (as in the question you reference) then put that in a text box and place it flush against the image bottom.
    – Mockman
    Commented Jun 28, 2021 at 6:14
  • For many scientific papers and theses, the option you recommend does not always work, although for the example given, it might, as long as the image has a width similar to that of the column.
    – jvarela
    Commented Jun 28, 2021 at 12:09
  • Some options for that scenario… pad the image with white space (or even transparent), or have Word do so, if the columns are wide enough that you can have multiple words per line beside the image, Word can also accomodate that. But the text box enables you to isolate the two texts, which is especially valuable if the text may change.
    – Mockman
    Commented Jun 28, 2021 at 18:04

1 Answer 1

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After trying many sites (including Microsoft's own help page on this subject) and many other suggestions, which none of them worked, I finally found out how you can do this.

  1. Open Microsoft Word (including latest version 16.50)
  2. Go to Word menu->Preferences
  3. Click on Ribbon & Toolbar
  4. Click on the tab Quick Access Toolbar
  5. Change the popup menu from Popular Commands to All Commands
  6. Search for the command Distribute Text on the list to the left and select it.
  7. Click on the button > to add it to the Customize Quick Access Toolbar list. This icon should appear at the top left corner of the Word document window.
  8. Select the paragraph you want to fix and click on the icon you just added and, voilá, problem solved.

I think this solution is quite convoluted. It could have been easily fixed if this command would show up in the ribbon but, at least for me, it doesn't.

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