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I have a received document in editable form, but need to remove an anchor from text that is somehow associated with boxes (for checkboxes). I haven't found a way to do this without losing the text. Why does Word even use anchors?
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
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Any object (text boxes, shapes, etc.) is anchored to a paragraph in the text. The only way to get rid of an anchor is to change the Text Wrapping of the object to "In line with text."
Note that if you are trying to position check boxes and other controls, use tables (show/hide borders as appropriate).
Adding to Doug's reply, if the pilcrow button is already turned off but the anchors still appear, go to File > Options > Display and uncheck the box for "Object anchors":
Click on the Pilcrow ¶ button in the Paragraph section of the Home tab of the ribbon to turn off the display of paragraph marks and other hidden formatting symbols
For specific instructions, please give us a link to a problem document.