Why do I get square brackets around text I've copied ?

[Alan Silver]

Hello,

I have recently noticed that when I copy something (Ctrl-c) in Word (97
running on Windows NT4), once the text has been copied, Word puts square
brackets around it. These don't appear in Print Preview, aren't printed
and aren't saved.

Any idea why they appear and how I get rid of them ? TIA

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Could they be bookmarks? See if "Bookmarks" is checked on the the View tab
of Tools | Options. I don't know why Word would be bookmarking copied text,
though, so that's a whole nother question.

 

[Uncle Joe]

Alan, you jinxed me. For the first time, I too got a square bracket
(only on the left side of paragraphs) when copying from another
document. It's like a large gray bracket. Puzzling. It went away when
I copied the odd paragraph to a space within my current doc.
Then I just deleted the bracket paragraph.

Can't imagine what's causing it. I'm certainly not using bookmarks.

 

[Alan Silver]

Alan, you jinxed me. For the first time, I too got a square bracket
(only on the left side of paragraphs) when copying from another
document. It's like a large gray bracket. Puzzling. It went away when
I copied the odd paragraph to a space within my current doc.
Then I just deleted the bracket paragraph.

I got a pair of brackets, at the start and end of the section that was
copied. I can't delete them as the cursor ignores them. I get a new pair
for every piece of copied text.

Can't imagine what's causing it. I'm certainly not using bookmarks.

Nor me. Weird eh ? I only get this on my Windows NT4 machine. My Win2000
machine which is running the same version (different copy, don't worry)
doesn't do this.

Thanx for the reply. Let's hope we find a solution.

 

[Beth Melton]

Hi Alan,

See if the issue occurs when you start Word using the /a switch. Go to
Start/Run and run:

winword /a

Note the space before the forward slash.

If it continues to occur then what patches do you have installed?

--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Alan Silver]

Hi Alan,

See if the issue occurs when you start Word using the /a switch. Go to
Start/Run and run:

winword /a

Note the space before the forward slash.

If it continues to occur then what patches do you have installed?

Nope, didn't happen then. What does the /a option do ?

Thanx for the reply

 

[Beth Melton]

Hi Alan,

The /a switch for troubleshooting as it will start Word with its
default settings.

If you didn't encounter the issue when starting Word with the /a
switch then the likely cause is either a setting you have turned on or
you have an add-in intercepting your copy/paste commands.

Since I don't know of a Word setting that would cause this, you should
rule out add-ins first:
- Start Word without using the /a switch.
- Go to Tools/Templates and Add-ins and see if you have any add-ins
listed.
- If so then deselect them one at a time (if more than one) and try
copy/paste.
- If you do not encounter the behavior then you've found the add-in.

The add-in will be located in either your Word Startup folder or
Office\Startup folder. The location of the Word Startup folder can be
found by going to Tools/Options/File Locations and the Office\Startup
folder is located in the Office installation path. You can also use
Windows Search to locate the add-in as well.

If the above steps do not resolve the issue then exit Word and try
moving all add-ins from the Startup folders. I've found occasionally
deselecting them in the Templates and Add-ins dialog box doesn't
always fully disable them.
--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Alan Silver]

Hi Alan,

<useful advice snipped>

Well, I looked in the add-ins and found a few listed. Only one was
selected, opware97.dot (no idea what this is). I deselected it, clicked
OK and quit Word. When I started Word again, the brackets didn't appear
when copying. I opened up the Add-ins dialog, and the opware97.dot was
selected again !! Even so, copying didn't produce square brackets.

Now I can start Word up and the brackets don't appear, even though the
add-in is selected !! Weird eh ?

Anyway, thanx very much for the help. It wasn't a major issue, but
things like that are really irritating sometimes ;-)

Ta ra

 

[Graham Mayor]

If you don't know what opware.dot is (and the only reference I could find on
line featured someone else having a problem with it)then remove it from the
Word or office startup folder in which it is located, so that Word does not
load it.

--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>>< ><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP

Web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>>< ><<>

 

[Alan Silver]

If you don't know what opware.dot is (and the only reference I could
find on line featured someone else having a problem with it)then remove
it from the Word or office startup folder in which it is located, so
that Word does not load it.

Ah ha !! I did a quick search and found that page (presumably the same
one as it was the only one Google listed). It referred to OmniPage,
which is an OCR program that came with my scanner. That explains why the
problem only occurred on the one machine and not any other.

Thanx a lot. It seems to be behaving itself at the moment, so I'll leave
it be. If I get any more trouble, I'll know who to blame !!

Thanx again

 

[Alan Silver]

Could they be bookmarks? See if "Bookmarks" is checked on the the View tab
of Tools | Options. I don't know why Word would be bookmarking copied text,
though, so that's a whole nother question.

Don't think so. Bookmarks are usually a sort of "I" shape. There were
definitely square brackets.

I'm glad to report that they've gone. Someone suggested disabling
add-ins one by one. That did the trick, even when the add-in was enabled
again.

Thanx for the reply

 

[Beth Melton]

Hi Alan,

They could have been bookmarks.

The "I' shape is created when you do not make a selection before
inserting the bookmark. If you make a selection first then you will
see something like:

[Text]

So when you don't make a selection, what you are actually seeing is
the square brackets ( [] ) on top of each other:

--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

<[email protected]> writes

 

[Alan Silver]

Hi Alan,

They could have been bookmarks.

The "I' shape is created when you do not make a selection before
inserting the bookmark. If you make a selection first then you will
see something like:

[Text]

So when you don't make a selection, what you are actually seeing is
the square brackets ( [] ) on top of each other:

Ah ha !!

Since posting my previous message, the dreaded brackets have reappeared.
I pulled up the Go To window and looked at the bookmarks. Guess what ?
The copied text had been set as a bookmark.

So there you are. Word is making my copied text into bookmarks.

I suspect that it is to do with the opware97.dot add-in, but I will test
this out and see.

Thanx

 

[Alan Silver]

I suspect that it is to do with the opware97.dot add-in, but I will
test this out and see.

Nope. I removed that from the StartUp folder and tried again, but still
got the bookmarks.

So, any idea why Word would be doing this ? AFAIK it is a standard
installation of Office97 Professional on Windows NT4 Server SP6a. A
similar install on Win2000 SP3 and another on XP don't do this.

Ta for any further help

 

[Charles Kenyon]

If so, you could probably safely turn of the display of bookmarks in your
view options. These don't print out.

Hi Alan,

They could have been bookmarks.

The "I' shape is created when you do not make a selection before
inserting the bookmark. If you make a selection first then you will
see something like:

[Text]

So when you don't make a selection, what you are actually seeing is
the square brackets ( [] ) on top of each other:

Ah ha !!

Since posting my previous message, the dreaded brackets have reappeared.
I pulled up the Go To window and looked at the bookmarks. Guess what ?
The copied text had been set as a bookmark.

So there you are. Word is making my copied text into bookmarks.

I suspect that it is to do with the opware97.dot add-in, but I will test
this out and see.

Thanx

 

[Klaus Linke]

The copied text had been set as a bookmark.


Hi Alan,

Perhaps the name of the bookmarks could give some clue about their origin?

Look in "Insert > Bookmark" (and click on "Hidden bookmarks" if necessary).

Greetings,
Klaus

 

[Alan Silver]

If so, you could probably safely turn of the display of bookmarks in your
view options. These don't print out.

I could, except for two points ...

1) I do use bookmarks occasionally, so turning them off would cause more
trouble than it saves

2) This avoids the basic question, which is why it is happening in the
first place.

Thanx anyway.

 

[Alan Silver]

Hi Alan,

Perhaps the name of the bookmarks could give some clue about their origin?

Look in "Insert > Bookmark" (and click on "Hidden bookmarks" if necessary).

Yup, I meant to mention that when I posted. They have names link
OLE_LINK1 and OLE_LINK2.

Dose that shed any light on the matter ?

Thanx

 

[Charles Kenyon]

There are Add-Ins that don't show up in that dialog. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/CheckIfAddinsInstalled.htm.

 

[Klaus Linke]

Perhaps the name of the bookmarks could give some clue about their
origin?necessary).

Yup, I meant to mention that when I posted. They have names link
OLE_LINK1 and OLE_LINK2.

Dose that shed any light on the matter ?

I'm pretty sure that they are inserted by OmniPage, to be able to refer
back from the text to the original scanned line.

But I guess that was clear anyhow...
I haven't used OmniPage lately; there might be some option that turns the
creation of those bookmarks off, or that deletes them.
Else you might use a macro to delete all bookmarks whose name starts with
"OLE_LINK":

Dim bmLoop As Bookmark
For Each bmLoop In ActiveDocument.Bookmarks
If Left(bmLoop.Name, 8) = "OLE_LINK" Then
bmLoop.Delete
End If
Next bmLoop

Regards,
Klaus