Block these blocks

July 10, 2009 11:06 AM

Word2007Filter: A MS Word 2007 document has decided that it wants to insert a dotted line marker (small squares across the page) before and after a block quotation...twice, and only twice. What on earth is this? More to the point, how do I get rid of it? Erasing and retyping the quotation doesn't help, so it clearly has something to do with a mysterious local formatting command. No enlightenment from either Google or Help (help!). My book manuscript will thank you.
posted by thomas j wise to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Change your view to Normal, then look at the dotted line. Are there words in the middle of the dotted line, like "page break" or "section break"?

Change to Print Preview. Are the dotted lines still there?

Do you have Show/Hide turned on, or off? (The button that toggles this on and off looks like a paragraph mark.)
posted by Houstonian at 11:27 AM on July 10, 2009

Setting the "Borders and Shading" to "none" should do the trick.
posted by unreasonable at 11:40 AM on July 10, 2009

Another option would be opening the .doc in openoffice.org, or abiword, saving in that program's native format, then fixing it and then saving as .doc again. At the very least you can merge this new .doc and the pre-existing one if that double-conversion messes things up.

From what I hear openoffice.org actually handles .doc files better than microsoft office does.
posted by idiopath at 12:52 PM on July 10, 2009

Thanks, everyone. I was able to fix it by changing formats & doing some judicious cutting-and-pasting.
posted by thomas j wise at 1:18 PM on July 10, 2009

Now that you solved your problem, here's some advice I got that I am following on this boring Friday night: sit down and read the Word 2007 help manual all at once, and practice the techniques unfamiliar to you as you go along.

Mind-numbing as it sounds, I am actually learning a lot. I am glad your question came up because same thing has happened to me. If I find the "official Microsoft answer" I'll return to post it here.

So, there it is, public service announcement #24: Reading the Word 2007 Help Manual in its entirety really gives you a better understanding of what to do when things go wrong.
posted by vincele at 8:56 PM on July 10, 2009