Unusual paragraph marks--cursor appears AFTER them, etc.

[colmcse2001]

I am an expert Word user, but have received a batch of files that exhibit
strange behavior--if I Show the nonprinting characters, I see spaces and
paragraph marks; if, however, I start applying styles, I find that the style
carries from one line to another (I don't want it on the second line, I want
a different style, but it's clearly seeing the style of the line before). I
was puzzled because there appears to be a paragraph mark between these lines,
so I couldn't understand what was happening. I then realized that I could
actually click the cursor into position AFTER the paragraph mark--i.e., if I
Hide the nonprinting characters, the cursor looks like it's appearing after
an extra space character.

I've tried a few things such as doing a global Replace of all instances of
^p, but I actually get a message that there are no ^p found. Let me emphasize
that when I do "Show," I'm not seeing simple line breaks--i.e., the L-shaped
arrow character...I am getting the pilcrow character. I've also tried copying
and pasting the character into the Replace dialog so that I could Replace
with ^p, but the Replace dialog sees it as a space, too. As a result, I'm
having to go through and replace each of these apparent paragraph marks with
a real hard return in Word before I can apply styles.

Has anyone heard of this before?

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Sounds like a corrupt document. Try copying all but the very last paragraph
mark in the document and pasting into a blank new document. Any help?

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***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/Mac/WordMacHome.html>
My Site: <http://www.bethrosengard.com>

 

[colmcse2001]

Hi, and thanks.

Oops--I just noticed that though I chose "Word" as the forum in which to
post, this appears to be Mac Word--I'm on PC. Does that make a difference?

At any rate, I tried copying all but the last para mark and pasting into a
black doc, but still have the odd paragraph marks--it's so strange that the
cursor can appear AFTER one of them! Also, it's happened in 16 files so far,
so corruption seems unlikely. So strange...

 

[CyberTaz]

You'll probably get more direct response in the PC Word group, although the
versions are not that different in most respects - its just that the PC
group gets a lot more traffic

In the meantime here a few thoughts & questions:

I've never seen the 'ghost' para marks as you describe in more than 15 yrs.
on both platforms, other than in a corrupted doc. Where did the 'batch' of
files come from - were they created in Word (what version) or some other
program? If another program, what, and how were they converted to Word docs?
Anything else you can share about the origin of the files. What version of
Word are *you* using?

It sounds like you're working in Print Layout View - in which case you may
not be able to see them -but I believe you're dealing with Continuous
Section Breaks. Turn on the Show/Hide & switch to Normal View... see if
double dotted lines labeled as Section Break (Continuous ) shows up at the
problem locations. That would explain why you can place the insertion point
to the right of the pilcrow & there looks like a space with Show/Hide turned
off.

If so, you can move the pointer to the left edge of the break & click when
the pointer looks like a white arrow leaning to the right, then press
Backspace or Delete to remove the break. That alone may be helpful in
reformatting the doc, but there is probably more to it involving the Styles
& settings used in the docs.

More info may also be asked for, like is it just the next para that gets
reformatted, all paras forward of that para, several successive paras, etc.

If all else fails you can use the Recover Text from Any File feature in the
File Type list of the Open dialog & then reformat as you please with the
styles you want to use.

 

[colmcse2001]

It's definitely odd--I've been using Word for nearly as long (almost daily
since about 1992, and on both platforms--including those all-in-one
little-monochrome-screen Macs ), and have NEVER seen such paragraph
marks; I guess I've never had a doc that was corrupted in that way...

Thanks for the suggestions--I tried the Normal view and Show, but no such
luck: there are no section breaks. Oddest thing. Maybe I'll try in the PC
view.

According to the file information, the files were last saved in "Word 10.0,"
and that's all I know at this point. I am using Word 2002 SP3 (10.6612.6626).

Maybe I'll try that Recover Text from Any File; I've alread tried saving one
as an RTF and then reopening, but no change. So weird--this is definitely the
oddest thing I've ever seen Word do!

Thanks again.

 

[CyberTaz]

The only other thing I can think of is if some sort of weird protection
scheme has been used. Even so the pilcrows wouldn't be gray & the section
breaks should show up. I truly don't know what else to suggest

 

[colmcse2001]

Thanks for responding--the cool thing is that even though saving as RTF
didn't work, I just tried saving as HTML, Filtered; then closed the file;
reopened the file and the paragraph marks behave normally. I then copy and
paste into my template. So at least it's a decent workaround, and beats all
the manual backspacing and hard-returning

 

[Phillip M. Jones, CE.T.]

I had thought about suggesting that because for a while this was the new
suggested method of getting rid of weird stuff in this very group by the
very on MVP. But I was leaving it up to the MVP's to suggest it. When
they didn't I was surprised. I didn't want to be perceived as a dunce if
it didn't work. I usually feel like one most of the time anyway.

Thanks for responding--the cool thing is that even though saving as RTF
didn't work, I just tried saving as HTML, Filtered; then closed the file;
reopened the file and the paragraph marks behave normally. I then copy and
paste into my template. So at least it's a decent workaround, and beats all
the manual backspacing and hard-returning

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[CyberTaz]

I dismissed that one because a) I somehow got the impression you had already
tried it, and b) although the technique is definitely effective for many
*similar* situations where extraneous stuff shows up it didn't seem to fit
here. Those situations normally don't involve pilcrows that turn on/off with
Show/Hide and the characters are typically the same intensity as the other
content... it just shows up as 'garbage'. I've tried copying from any number
of web sites & pasting using every option Paste Special has to offer & still
haven't ever seen any such situation.

Anyway, I'm glad you found the solution & I'll try to keep it in mind in
case there is a 'next time' - although I'd still love to know how it came
about

Thanks for posting back with the info!

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Phillip -

Don't ever hesitate to offer a suggestion as long as you've tested it enough
to have valid confidence in it & are *reasonably* certain that it won't
cause any harm. My understanding is that even an "educated guess" is
acceptable as long as it is clearly indicated as such rather than being
touted as a sure-fire cure. 'Responsible' & 'accountable' seem to be pretty
good guidelines to folow

 

[Beth Rosengard]

And the reason that I, for one, didn't suggest it is that I've never seen
this method work before, even though it's supposed to . I tried it
myself on a corrupt document once and nothing happened, though doing a
Maggie (copying all but the last paragraph mark) did.

I'm glad to know that it actually does work in some situations!

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/Mac/WordMacHome.html>
My Site: <http://www.bethrosengard.com>

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Next time, use Save As "Web Page" but NOT "Filtered"

"Filtered" removes the XML that upsets the web purists, but in doing so it
also removes the extra attributes (such as section breaks, headers, footers,
fields) that make a Word document a "document".

I can't be sure what the problem was, and you've solved it now so it doesn't
matter, but I suspect you came up against a Word 2002 "Style Separator".

This was a truly silly idea introduced in Word 2002 to enable people to
create run-in headings. It looks and behaves like a greyed-out paragraph
mark, but it does not produce a line break.

They came to their senses and removed it in Word 2003 (and Mac BU was not
silly enough to replicate it in Mac Word).

The cure, if you see another one, is to Delete it Word Mac probably
treats it as a "protected" character, so you may have to move the rest of
the text out from around it then delete the whole "paragraph" to get it out.

To replace the Style Separator, the PC lot came up with something even
stupider: "Partially applied styles". Documentation professionals are
inclined to suffer laughter-based injury just thinking about the nonsense
that "partially-applied" and "Styles" conjures up. But they do enable
people to create run-in headings while trashing their document formatting


Cheers

Thanks for responding--the cool thing is that even though saving as RTF
didn't work, I just tried saving as HTML, Filtered; then closed the file;
reopened the file and the paragraph marks behave normally. I then copy and
paste into my template. So at least it's a decent workaround, and beats all
the manual backspacing and hard-returning

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410