phantom line

Question

I am working on importing a second generation photocopy of a 300 page document by scanning it 10 pages at a time in high res, opening ion word, poking through to remove junk and correct formats, then pasting all 10 pages at a time into a master word document. So far so good as i learn. however on one out of 40 pages so far i have a line or and underscore that i cant delete. Similiar lines are used in the rest of the document without problem. It cannot be selected, it cannot be highlighted. It will not select via select all. I tried minimizing all text to size 1 on each side of the line to expose page breaks but find nothing. It cannot be moved by spacing or any other editing. It seems to me an immovable rock. It can be typed over. It is like it is in a different layer or dimension. How can i delete this phantom?

Answer 1

Go to Word> Preferences> Ribbon & Toolbar - Quick Access Toolbar. Select All Commands on the left then locate the Select Drawing Objects tool & add it to the QAT. You may be able to use it to drag a selection marquee around an area suspected of containing this junk in order to more easily select it.

Answer 2

Provide a sample file with no personal/confidential information on a cloud such as OneDrive. Include a share link in a reply here so that responders can take a first hand look.

Answer 3

my previous problem with cleanign up scanned docs is that the junk is so small that it is hard to select even at 500% magnification and i was looking for an easier way to select the junk. so far i can get most all of it with extreme patience. if i could enlarge to 1000% woudl be great.

Answer 4

it is not in the footer. the line does identify when you toggle on the show/hide key. i was incorrect earlier abvout being able to type over it. you cannot. so it is a thing that is there and its large but i cannot select it to delete. i did read through the previously recommended article. i will read again and try more. all other bits of junk i can at least select to delete. this one wants to stay. 60 pages done so far and this is the only problem.

Answer 5

Artifacts in scanned documents can be virtually impossible to remove. An unlikely possibility but have you tried accessing the Header/Footer to see whether it may be there?

The article Charles Kenyon refers to in reply to your other posting may be helpful. The article is predicated on Word for Windows but readily translates to Word for mac. Have you had an opportunity to view it yet?