Unwanted Thick Black Brackets Appearing

[Rafael Montserrat]

OS 10.4.10
Ibook G4
1.5 GB Ram
Word 2004

Unwanted Thick Black Brackets Appearing

What are these? How do I get rid of them?

Thanks, Rafael

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Probably bookmarks--something about Word sometimes makes them appear
when you copy and paste. In Word | Preferences | View, do they go away
when you uncheck Bookmarks?

See the discussion here, if so:
http://groups.google.com/group/micr...read/thread/d9008bc57718f17a/6d9e4a9a62bdc3f2

As I say there, it's probably an interaction with another program, but
it's probably not worth your time to chase down.

 

[Rafael Montserrat]

Yes. They do go away when I uncheck Bookmarks in View.

In View, next to the ŒShow Bookmarks¹ box, it says, ³Displays bookmarks in
your document by enclosing them in square brackets. The square brackets
display in your document but they don¹t print.²

I seldom get those brackets. Bookmarks are from Safari. What is the
Safari/Word relationship that makes the brackets appear? In this last
document, some words were bracketed, and the whole text was bracketed also .
If the brackets don¹t print, and if they don¹t refer to (or a typist can¹t
see) specific bookmarks on a word document, or on a printed word document,
what use are they?

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Well, officially they let Word track things. Word creates invisible
bookmarks in order to create a table of contents or cross-references,
for instance. Or let's say you had a contract that uses the client's
name five times--you might type it once and deliberately create
bookmarks to reflect that text the next four times.

So sometimes when you copy and paste, for some reason Word thinks that
location needs to be tracked and creates a bookmark. Don't know why--but
the brackets do refer to a specific bookmark. The link I gave you has
diagnostic questions, which you can try answering to track down the
cause, but it's probably easier to just use the macro there to get rid
of them periodically if they get in the way.

They can be individually deleted via Insert | Bookmark, but that's a hassle.

"Bookmarks are from Safari" makes no sense to me, I'm afraid.

Daiya

 

[Rafael Montserrat]

What I meant by Bookmarks are from Safari is that I've never used or knew
about bookmarks in Word. In Safari I use Bookmarks a lot. The following is
from the entry 'Bookmark' in Word Help:

"Bookmark
A location or selection of text that you name for reference purposes.
Microsoft Word marks the location with the name you specify. Bookmarks are
more than placeholders ‹ for example, you can use them to create and number
cross-references.

Add a bookmark
1. Select an item you want a bookmark assigned to, or click where you want
to insert a bookmark.
2. On the Insert menu, click Bookmark.
3. Under Bookmark name, type or select a name.
4. Click Add."

Why, then, since there's a process that a user has to go through to "name"
the location, and "add" a bookmark, should bookmarks that I never created
show up my document?
-----------------------------------------------------------
Related issue

That reminds me that recently I'll begin typing in one or two characters for
a word, and before I'm finished with the word, a name (person's name) with a
dotted underline will pop up right in front of my last typed character. The
name has nothing to do with the word I was beginning to type other than it
has the first two characters in common with the word I started. It's
irritating. I think that what I do is select/cut the name.

A similar thing that often happens is again when typing two or three
characters of a word, a yellow box will appear slightly above the line of
text with the same thing, a person's name that starts with those two or
three characters. Again annoying.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Hi Rafael,

Did you read the page I sent you to? "This isn't supposed to happen,
and it doesn't happen to everyone."

Sometimes, Word randomly creates bookmarks when you copy and paste,
because for some unknown reason, it thinks it needs bookmarks. It
doesn't happen to everyone, and there are several different triggers
identified, and other unknown ones. It's a bug that seems to have no
fix. It is probably linked to interaction with another program.

If you want to invest some effort looking for the particular cause on
your machine, say so--we'll offer suggestions. If you don't, your
options are to ignore them, hide them, or delete them periodically. They
are mostly harmless. If you are converting to HTML, they might cause a
problem.

Bookmarks in Safari are totally irrelevant--same word, different meaning
in different contexts.

-----

*Not* a related issue, by the way, other than Word being confusing.

The yellow box with a name is an AutoComplete, offering to complete the
AutoText you are typing. Entourage contacts are automatically loaded as
AutoText entries. To stop this happening, in Tools | AutoCorrect |
AutoText, you can either turn the AutoComplete offerings off entirely
(uncheck "show AutoComplete tips" box) or you can just check the box to
"exclude contacts" from AutoComplete offerings.

The (purple) dotted underline signifies that this is a contact from the
contact toolbar. I don't use this feature, so am a little hazy on it and
forget what it's called. Read the help on "Field Codes: Contact field"
to see what you can do with a dotted underlined name. It doesn't make
sense, though, that the dotted line would pop up in front of you as the
yellow box did--I don't think they behave that way. I believe that if
you accidentally accepted an AutoComplete to type a name, it would have
the dotted underline, as that's equivalent to using the contacts toolbar.

Daiya

 

[rafaelmontserrat]

Hi Rafael,

Did you read the page I sent you to? "This isn't supposed to happen,
and it doesn't happen to everyone."

Sometimes, Word randomly creates bookmarks when you copy and paste,
because for some unknown reason, it thinks it needs bookmarks. It
doesn't happen to everyone, and there are several different triggers
identified, and other unknown ones. It's a bug that seems to have no
fix. It is probably linked to interaction with another program.

If you want to invest some effort looking for the particular cause on
your machine, say so--we'll offer suggestions. If you don't, your
options are to ignore them, hide them, or delete them periodically. They
are mostly harmless. If you are converting to HTML, they might cause a
problem.

Bookmarks in Safari are totally irrelevant--same word, different meaning
in different contexts.

-----

*Not* a related issue, by the way, other than Word being confusing.

The yellow box with a name is an AutoComplete, offering to complete the
AutoText you are typing. Entourage contacts are automatically loaded as
AutoText entries. To stop this happening, in Tools | AutoCorrect |
AutoText, you can either turn the AutoComplete offerings off entirely
(uncheck "show AutoComplete tips" box) or you can just check the box to
"exclude contacts" from AutoComplete offerings.

The (purple) dotted underline signifies that this is a contact from the
contact toolbar. I don't use this feature, so am a little hazy on it and
forget what it's called. Read the help on "Field Codes: Contact field"
to see what you can do with a dotted underlined name. It doesn't make
sense, though, that the dotted line would pop up in front of you as the
yellow box did--I don't think they behave that way. I believe that if
you accidentally accepted an AutoComplete to type a name, it would have
the dotted underline, as that's equivalent to using the contacts toolbar.

Daiya

Yes, I Have " ... read the page I sent you to? "This isn't supposed
to happen,
and it doesn't happen to everyone."

Thanks, Rafael