Banishing the ghosts of footnotes past

September 25, 2011 5:18 AM

In the text of my document (in Microsoft word for mac version 14.1.2) there are some bizarre horizontal lines just...sitting there between lines of text. You cannot get the cursor on them to delete them. I believe these lines are leftover old footnote separators from previous cutting and pasting from another version of word. But now, it looks like footnote separators are hanging around in the body of my text. How can I delete these lines? I tried the advice of the previous askme about getting rid of footnote separators, but it was an older version of microsoft word AND the advice pointed to was only designed to work for separaters actually in designated footnote areas. Can anyone tell me how to get rid of the old separators refusing to exit the actual body of a text?
posted by Tylwyth Teg to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Best answer: Assuming you have not changed the Normal style, apply the Normal style to the text.
posted by Houstonian at 5:22 AM on September 25, 2011

Cut the entire body of text, then paste special as plain/unformatted text. If cutting doesn't get rid of the lines, copy everything into a new document as unformatted text.
posted by supercres at 6:30 AM on September 25, 2011 [2 favorites]

If they are floating lines (objects) and not a formatted line (like an underline), you can select all and they should highlight (along with everything else). Then you can click on the outlines of the line to select it and delete.

It is something of a pain though if there are a lot of these drawing elements, but it is one solution.

YMMV of course, especially as I am not that familiar with Mac Word.
posted by lampshade at 7:59 AM on September 25, 2011

Try selecting the surrounding paragraphs and hitting Command-Spacebar (if I'm translating correctly out of Winword--I've used Mac Word quite a bit, but not recently). This will strip character formatting. If that's not it, what do the lines look like--solid, dashed, dotted ...? More information would help.
posted by Logophiliac at 8:03 AM on September 25, 2011

I've gotten rid of lines like this by copying everything, then doing a Paste Special into a new document, either as styled text (the best-case scenario, as this preserves most of your document's formatting) or as unformatted text. YMMV, though, depending on what the lines actually are. Could you tell us more about the lines' behavior—even if you can't get the cursor on one specifically, if you try deleting backward from the paragraph after it, what happens? Does the text go over the line (like the line is sort of anchored to the page), or does the line sort of "attach" itself to that paragraph, or...? Or if you try forward-deleting from the paragraph marker at the end of the paragraph before one of the lines, what happens? Does it differ at all?
posted by limeonaire at 8:36 AM on September 25, 2011

Can you post a screenshot of the problem (how to)? Does it persist over saving and re-opening the document?

I've seen Word draw weird lines on the document that were just a rendering error, and disappeared after reloading the doucment.
posted by scose at 8:55 AM on September 25, 2011

Could it be track changes is on and you need to accept the spaces between paragraphs?

If the cut and paste method does not work try to see if it is track changes.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 9:28 AM on September 25, 2011

Seconding that it is a style issue. The paragraph properties of the text are set to "have a straight line under the paragraph", you can't select it. Select the text, up to the start of the next paragraph and apply "normal" style as described above. You can also try right clicking and choosing either text or paragraph properties, I forget which.
posted by Iteki at 9:43 AM on September 25, 2011

If they aren't selectable then they might be borders. You can try selecting the text around them and applying "no borders" to it.
posted by bethnull at 1:00 PM on September 25, 2011

Response by poster: Thanks everyone. Copying and pasting the whole text, then applying normal style worked. Thanks so much for the help!!
posted by Tylwyth Teg at 5:11 PM on September 25, 2011