Why do sections of my document disappear and reappear and have little arrow shaped widgets randomly throughout the doc at the left margin?

I have added this to my article at http://wordfaqs.ssbarnhill.com/NonprintChars.htm

Rotated triangles in the left margin are expand/collapse buttons by heading-level paragraphs.

These are actually for any paragraph to which an outline level other than Body Text has been applied.

There is an option available to expand all of these upon opening a document.

You will also see any such paragraphs in the Navigation Pane.

Here is a response generated by Microsoft's AI which is at least plausible:

It sounds like you may have accidentally enabled the "Show/Hide" feature in Microsoft Word. This feature displays non-printing characters such as paragraph marks, tabs, and spaces. The arrow-shaped widgets you are seeing are likely to be the section breaks. To turn off the "Show/Hide" feature, you can click on the "¶" button in the "Paragraph" section of the "Home" tab. If this does not resolve the issue, please let me know and I can provide further assistance.

I think the arrow-shaped symbols would be where you pressed the tab key in the document to advance to the next tab stop myself. (Artificial Intelligence or Artificial Stupid? I marked the part about section breaks in green and think it questionable.)

See:

• Collapsible Headings
• Nonprinting Formatting Marks by Suzanne Barnhill, MVP

Hi Suzanne,

Slight correction in your article.

Clicking on the expanded triangle (pointing down-right) arrow to collapse beside a Heading 1 collapses (hides but does not delete) all content between that paragraph and the next Heading 1 paragraph. The triangle then turns to point toward the paragraph. Clicking to collapse a Heading 2 paragraph collapses all content between that paragraph and the next Heading 1 or Heading 2 paragraph.

Here is the structure of a sample document demonstrating this:

Collapsing paragraph 1-B will hide everything until Heading 1-C. Collapsing Heading 2-B will hide everything until Heading 2-3.

Here is a temporary link to the document with this structure: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/053to49xd1k3jppbva3wq/deleteme-collapse-headings.docx?rlkey=vsygprlk991k5c0w3wb9tbauf&dl=0

Also, the collapse/expand button will be there for any paragraph with an outline level other than body text.

While the heading levels have such an outline level, the built-in ones automatically, such a level can be applied to any paragraph or part of any style.

Rotated triangles

Is there any way to turn them (and only them!) off? as I never use them.

Thanks in advance for any replies.