Is there a way to view hidden characters in Word for Windows?

[Poppy Gerard]

Hi there. I have been using Word'97 for quite a while, and have
noticed that sometimes I delete what I think is a space only for the
formatting to change. Sometimes this formatting change affects the
whole paragraph / section which I am working on. This can be
frustrating.

I presume that Word is using hidden characters to store formatting
commands. My question is - is there a way to view these hidden
characters?

In the old Word Perfect v5.1 for DOS there was a way to view all the
hidden formatting characters, and it was very useful to be able to
look at these while attempting complex edits. Is there any way of
doing something similar in Word?

I would be grateful for any advice / guidance that people may be able
to offer.

With many thanks,
Best wishes,


Poppy Gerard
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

See http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/General/RevealCodes.htm

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi, Poppy,

To see nonprinting characters, click the ¶ button on the toolbar. For
explanations of most of them, see
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Formatting/NonPrintChars.htm.

If formatting changes when you delete something, you probably deleted
an end-of-paragraph mark, which stores the formatting for that
paragraph. A good way to avoid this is to leave the paragraph marks
displayed all the time, by going to Tools > Options > View and
checking the appropriate box, or at least click the ¶ before you
delete and click it again afterward.

If more extensive changes happen, you're probably running into the
"Automatically update" setting of a style, as explained in
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Formatting/WholeDocumentReformatted.htm.

Finally, remember that when bad things happen, you can usually fix
them by pressing Undo (Ctrl+Z) immediately. Also, save often and make
backups!