Anyone ever encounter this problem in Word 2007?
Word's automatic bibliography is not making the reference numbers column wide enough, so it's wrapping the closing bracket onto the next line. Is there any way to fix this? I can't manually change the column width, Word won't let me.
I'm using the IEEE 2006 bibliography style with the default Word 2007 Style Set.
I could make the font size smaller, but I'd prefer not to.
This appears to be a defect in the IEEE 2006 style when you have long URLs in a citation.
One of my citations has a long URL that is just about the same width as the page. It forced the citation column to be wider, and squished the reference number column.
I edited that citation's URL to have a space so that the URL could wrap. Now it doesn't squish the reference number column.
I did try editing the citation style XSL file (C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\Bibliography\Style\IEEE2006OfficeOnline.xsl). I replaced <xsl:value-of select="'1%'"/> with <xsl:value-of select="'5%'"/>. However this did not help because of the above problem with the long URL.
If you don't want to change the XSL style as explained in M. Dudley's answer (which simply did not work for me), you can simply change the column width by hovering next to the citation number column, then dragging it to the right when you get the cursor:
Note that you really need to change this column, and not the margins at the top ruler—otherwise you'll shift the entire bibliography to the right.
In word 365, using IEEE referencing style, I couldn't change the column width, but if I clicked "distribute columns" then it let me change it until I clicked away from the table, whereupon it did not let me change it again until I distributed columns again! At least it worked
I was able to solve the problem by choosing "fixed column width" under the autofit option and then adjusting each column width manually to fit.
No need to change the XSL file. Click on the bibliography and the table menu appears. Open the table properties and navigate to column. There you can click on Previous Column or Next Column. I had to click on Previous Column twice to get the column where the numbers are. Now you can change the percentage of the column width. I had to choose 3%.
I'm using Word 2016.
Edit: Maybe you have to choose Distribute Columns before and then choose the right percentage
I simply increased the column width of the first column. Now, the formatting should be good for double digit numbers. If you exceed 99, then simply increase the column width a little more.
All you need to do is adjust the margin in your reference list. Move it to the right just a bit and everything will be okay.
