Text in Word displaying lines between paragraphs

Hi,

Follow these steps and check if it helps:

Go to File > Options > Advanced. In the "Show document content" section, clear the checkbox for "Show text boundaries".

Reply with the results to assist you better.

Thank you.

As a Beta Tester, I can assure you that we have taken Microsoft to task over a number of changes that they have made, including this issue in particular.  Unfortunately, in this case, Microsoft's response was that the way in which Text Boundaries worked in earlier versions was not the way that it was supposed to be and no amount of objections to the new arrangement had any influence on them.

Thanks a lot for your comments, Doug. But it is really disappointing to see the way Microsoft leads with such things. Something useful, up and running and suddenly, in a new Office release, just disappeared. It is a pity.

I've used Word since it's first version. I must agree that the "new" implementation of text boundaries is unproductive and highly annoying in it's implementation. If they insist on keeping this implementation, they need to give individual options for page/section and paragraph boundaries instead of the one wretched setting which makes the feature useless.

I find it difficult to believe that a feature that yielded a page/section format feature is now tied to paragraphs because "it was always supposed to be that way". Consider how the boundaries worked in previous versions. Regardless of the paragraphs in a section, the boundaries were unaltered. Paragraphs could cross those boundaries. Multiple paragraph formats could be combined in the same section, still the text boundaries remained reflecting the margins of the section.

I can see a use for the "paragraph" boundaries if laying out a newsletter or document with heavy percentages of graphics, equations, etc. For normal business documents, why in the world would you use them? The text boundaries showing the sectional margins, on the other hand, are always useful.

Why do they insist on dumbing-down an excellent application. Product "enhancements" should not render users less productive. Thank you everyone. This is has been an informative discussion even if disappointing.

Unfortunately, this is just the way text boundaries work in Word 2013. Beta testers protested the change, but it turns out that the previous display of text boundaries was never really intentional, and the new display is a result (perhaps an unintended consequence) of the change in layout engine. Like you, I find the display unusable either with these terrible boundaries or without boundaries at all (one reason I'm not using Word 2013).

You could clean up the display a lot, though, by using Spacing Before/After instead of empty paragraphs between your text paragraphs: instead of pressing Enter twice to get space between paragraphs, modify the paragraph style to have the desired amount of space; since the default Normal style already has 10 pts Spacing After, it will be more efficient to add to that amount since Spacing Before and After are not additive unless you disable the HTML paragraph spacing rule, and Spacing Before would therefore be ignored unless it was more than 10 points.

H Suzanne! Thanks a lot for your answer! But I am really disappointed with the way Microsoft leads with its users. Should I say disgusting? This Office 2013 brings lots of improvements but removed lots of "good things", like the dark skin (the actual skin is so light that sometimes its difficult to see what is displayed), to mention just one of the "declination".

Regarding your suggestion of clean up the display, I appreciate it but it was not enough, as the "lines" were not removed.

A final question, if you don't mind to disclose: which version of Word (or word processor) are you using?

Thank you so much for your help!

Regards,

EA

Unfortunately, this is just the way text boundaries work in Word 2013. Beta testers protested the change, but it turns out that the previous display of text boundaries was never really intentional, and the new display is a result (perhaps an unintended consequence) of the change in layout engine. Like you, I find the display unusable either with these terrible boundaries or without boundaries at all (one reason I'm not using Word 2013).

You could clean up the display a lot, though, by using Spacing Before/After instead of empty paragraphs between your text paragraphs: instead of pressing Enter twice to get space between paragraphs, modify the paragraph style to have the desired amount of space; since the default Normal style already has 10 pts Spacing After, it will be more efficient to add to that amount since Spacing Before and After are not additive unless you disable the HTML paragraph spacing rule, and Spacing Before would therefore be ignored unless it was more than 10 points.

Thanks a lot, Guruprasad Ra, for your prompt answer.

This has removed the lines between paragraph, definitively. But the limits of text (margins boundaries) were also removed. I do want to keep them. I could do it in the previous Office versions (e.g. 2010) but I don't understand why it has changed in the 2013 version.

Thanks a lot once again.

BR

Eddo Ammo