Cannot remove paragraph mark

Question

I have a paragraph I cannot delete in my footer. I come across this sort of thing in Word and it makes ne crazy. I've inherited this document and am tasked with getting it formatted properly. The original author had no clue how to use Word. The styles were all renamed and deleted. . . basically I had to start from scratch, get a decent style set, then go page by page properly styling text. I've managed to do that to 48 123page documents. THIS one is driving me crazy. There's a paragraph mark in the footer that is throwing off the size. I need it gone. Not hidden, GONE. I can select it, but I can't cut it or delete it. I've tried removing all footer , and it remains. There's no style on it, no formatting,. I cannot delete the paragraph at the end of the line above either. What gives?

Answer 1

It's impossible to tell from looking at that screenshot, but is the line above the paragraph mark inside a table? One of Word's quirks is that the paragraph mark that follows a table cannot be deleted.

If there is a table there, copy/paste the text of the line outside the table and then delete the table.

If there is no table, try selecting the paragraph mark and changing its font size to 1 point. That should let the layout appear correct.

Answer 2

Put the cursor immediately to the left of it and then use the Backspace key.

If that doesn't fix it, if you send me a copy of the document, referencing this thread in the covering email message, I will investigate the issue.

Answer 3

Thanks Jay, this workaround solved my issue. The footer in my document is a table, so I have that trailing paragraph mark. I changed the paragraph mark to 1pt font and the margins are correct now.