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How do you remove all instances of expand/collapse in Word 2016?

Anonymous
2017-11-16T18:09:20+00:00

I edit large documents that are passed around by many people, and I've noticed that some of my colleagues will send back a document where nearly every single line will have the expand/collapse feature enabled. Obviously, this is absolutely useless (since every line has it, nothing actually expands or collapses). Not only is it useless, but it also interferes with my ability to upload the document into a 3rd party program that has very specific formatting requirements.

Is there a way to remove all instances of expand/collapse in a document without messing up the formatting of everything else?

Thanks!

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-11-17T16:31:32+00:00

    Thank you for letting me know that there is no way to remove instances of expand/collapse without changing the formatting of the document. It would be great if in the future there were some sort of macro or another workaround to remove them all without

    having to go back and fix any unwanted formatting changes, but I'm sure this is not an issue that crops up for other people very often. Hope you have a great day!

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-11-17T16:54:16+00:00

    Thank you for attempting to answer my question. Unfortunately, expanding/collapsing all instances does not actually remove them. Keeping them in, expanded or not, interferes with uploading the document properly into a 3rd party program. Thank you for the reply nonetheless.

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-11-16T22:48:26+00:00

    Hi,

    Expand/Collapse is a feature built-in to all the default heading styles in Word except for No Space and Normal. There is no option to disable the Expand/Collapse feature unless you will be using the Normal style or you will be creating a custom style based on the Normal formatting. You can use this article as a reference on how to create a new style based on document formatting.

    If you still wish to have a version of Word styles that don't have the Expand/Collapse feature, we encourage you to submit a suggestion to our Word UserVoice. This way our Word Team will be able to review your suggestion. Your feedback helps us to continually improve your experience with our product.

    If you have other questions, feel free to reach out to us.

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  4. Charles Kenyon 166.8K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2017-11-17T23:29:03+00:00

    It occurs to me that if you saved it in Word .doc format, that would do it, as would saving in compatibility mode for Word 2007 or 2010. However, while the document is open in Word 2016, the expand/collapse option is still there. This is apparently not a part of the document structure, but a feature of the program.

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  5. Charles Kenyon 166.8K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2017-11-17T01:50:41+00:00

    You can expand/collapse all instances in a document by right-clicking on one of the expand/collapse triangles.

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