Undeletable para marks in body of Word 2003 document

[JGHwrites]

I have more than once encountered paragraph marks in the body of Word docs
(i.e. NOT the last mark in the document) that do not respond to delete or cut
commands. When DELETE is used, the mark is simply selected. The current
example I'm confronting is between two tables...BUT there is also a paragraph
containing text after the first of these two tables. I've tried deleted the
mark at the end of that para, but it, too, is immortal. I was able to copy
the mark, paste it into a fresh document, and delete it there. I cannot
discover any formatting or tools settings that control the marks' behavior.
Has anyone else encountered this, and what did you do about it?

 

[Klaus Linke]

I have more than once encountered paragraph marks in the body of Word docs
(i.e. NOT the last mark in the document) that do not respond to delete or
cut
commands. When DELETE is used, the mark is simply selected. The current
example I'm confronting is between two tables...BUT there is also a
paragraph
containing text after the first of these two tables. I've tried deleted
the
mark at the end of that para, but it, too, is immortal. I was able to copy
the mark, paste it into a fresh document, and delete it there. I cannot
discover any formatting or tools settings that control the marks'
behavior.
Has anyone else encountered this, and what did you do about it?

Hi,

You can't have a table inline in a paragraph. So Word may try to keep you
from deleting the paragraph mark right in front of a table.
In Word2003, if I select the paragraph mark in front of a table and hit the
Del key, the text of the paragraph moves into the first cell of the table. I
think older versions didn't act like that, and it might be a new bug.

If you try different things (say "Select, Edit > Cut") you should still be
able to get rid of the paragraph mark. OTOH, if the paragraph mark was
between tables, the tables will merge after you delete it. If that isn't
what you want, you could format the paragraph mark as hidden (Format >
Font).

Greetings,
Klaus

 

[JGHwrites]

Klaus -- thanks for the remarks. Actually, I've tried to select and cut with
no success; and the tables aren't inline, as far as I can tell. I know that
removing the last para between tables will merge them -- at the moment,
though, in this document (which I'm working on, but didn't originally
create...heaven knows what's in the engineer-crafted template!) I have
several 'empty' paragraph marks lodged between tables, where I only want the
one that has text associated with it.

best,
Julian

 

[JGHwrites]

A follow-up to my reply to Klaus:

I'm at home now, and I've just reproduced this behavior on my other PC, also
running XP Pro and Office 2003. I succeeded in moving the tables to another
section of the document, where they sit comfortably separated by non-immortal
paragraph marks. So now I had a page on which there are six para marks in a
row, none of them deletable by any method I could discover (and I'm fairly
competent in working around Word's odd behaviors, typically). Then I turned
off track changes (which my client expressly wishes me *not* to do)...and
presto, I could delete the bloody things. Well, ok, I've got it solved, but
does this not sound like a teensy bug? Does to me. Anyway, thanks to all (or
both, rather) for your suggestions.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you change the view from Final Showing Markup to Final, you should no
longer see the paragraph marks you were unable to delete.