Any MS Word experts out there?

[tog]

My girlfriend is just finishing off her PhD (History of art, Milan, 16th century), but we are having a problem with some formatting breaks in Word. They take the form of dashes across the page, and no amount of copy and pasting around them, near them, whatever, seems to be able to get rid of them. They just reappear elsewhere. What makes them a major headache though is the fact they are printing characters - if they didn't print it wouldn't matter (so much)!

There are several of them throughout the document, and they appear to have been caused by some sort of auto-formatting function, because they are at points where she wrote 'notes to self' marked by three asterisks during the writing of the thesis. But again, no exploration of the auto-formatting will explain them. If you put the cursor right over them it becomes a line with arrows and you can drag the line down a little, but not up or away. They are not a separate line, but between the lines of text above and below.

Here's a screengrab of one:




She uses an XP machine and I use Office for Mac, so they are definitely something in the document not the specific machine. She is obviously not keen to retype the whole thing, as it is about 100,000 words in all (though each chapter is an individual Word file) and all the proof reading is now done. It is just this line that is holding everything up now.

Can anyone help! Please!

[maddog-uk]

Which version of word? It would say page break on Winword 2003 if thats the version you haved. I think it may be a a box unders borders and shading.

>> Edited by maddog-uk on Saturday 11th February 02:41

[zaktoo]

Only one suggestion that's a long shot - hopefully brighter sparks will be along shortly to help in better ways - but try downloading OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org) and see if there's a quick way to sanitise the thing in there. Use the time waiting to download to make copies soft- and hardcopies!

HTH

Ciao

Zak

[Gaffer]

Looks like a Page Break to me.

I cant remember where the control for it is but its in one of the menus. If she selects the show/hide tool (normally on the drop down arrow next to the 75% box) it will say PAGE BREAK next to the line.

HTH

Claire

I was accidently under Ians ID so deleted post and added under mine

[towman]

Gaffer said:

Looks like a Page Break to me.

Not so sure about that Claire - page breaks don`t normally print do they?

[tog]

Wow, thanks guys I hadn't expected so many replies by the time I woke up!

However, we have a winner:

maddog-uk said:

I think it may be a a box unders borders and shading.

You absolute angel!!! In 14 minutes, in the middle of the night, PistonHeads solves a problem that had flummoxed all manner of professors, doctors, PhD students, software engineers, assorted friends and hangers on, and me, for months!! We had spent ages going through every possible break option and just couldn't see how it could be a break, but a box - now that's inspired randomness from Word!

Maddog-uk, you are a hero

>> Edited by tog on Saturday 11th February 10:10

[maddog-uk]

No worries! Glad I could help.

[towman]

maddog-uk said:

No worries! Glad I could help.

I think you have a fan Simon!

[percy flage]

You need a comma between "medal A" and "which", just below your problem dots.

[tog]

You wouldn't believe how much time is spent discussing commas. And if you change one, you then have to check the other 100,000 words again to ensure consistency of style... It will all be over soon, should be printed next week. Thne one hell of a piss-up can ensue

[percy flage]

All the best with it. I well remember my final year dissertation. Never before in human history has so much been plagiarised by so few for such little return..........