How to remove the Field Coders in a {hyperlink} word doc

Question

Hi,

My word documents are now showing hyperlinks and page numbers with {}. I have tried alt F9 and and also the advanced options but it shows the toggle greyed out. See the picture.

Any suggestions? I can live with it on my screen as long as the formatting is showing for the people I send it to.

Thanks!

Answer 1

If Alt+F9 does not work, try Alt+Fn+F9 instead. Many computer manufacturers have assigned PC-specific commands to the function keys (such as F9) meaning that the keys won't work without you also holding Fn.

Note that Alt+Fn+F9 (or Alt+F9) acts as a toggle command.

When you press Alt+Fn+F9, make sure that you have only one Word document, in one document window, open. This ensures that the setting is correctly written to the Windows registry.

Answer 2

This is a field-code display issue in Word. Hyperlinks, page numbers, and tables of contents are fields, so when field codes are shown, they appear with braces like { HYPERLINK ... } or { PAGE ... }.

Try these fixes on Windows:

1. Press Alt+F9 again to toggle all field codes in the document.
   • On some keyboards, use Alt+Fn+F9.
2. If only one item is affected, select it and press Shift+F9.
3. In File > Options > Advanced, under Show document content, clear Show field codes instead of their values.

About the grayed-out option in the screenshot:

• Word can still switch field-code display with Alt+F9 even when that setting appears unavailable.

For documents sent to other people:

• The field-code display is a Word view setting. The context indicates Word shows either field codes or their values in the local app view. Recipients normally see the document according to their own Word display settings, not forced by what is currently shown on the sender’s screen.

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References:

• Context URLs in all MS Word document now displaying with {HYPERLINK prefix and will not launch - Microsoft Q&A This began happening a few days ago. How do I fix this?
• Table of Contents replaced with random text - Microsoft Q&A For some reason my table of contents is now displaying this: I assume that's a "code" that instructs Word what the table should look like—TOC with headings 1 and 2. It also appears whenever I insert a new one or open a previous version of a document.
• Table of Contents and Page Numbers Displaying Code - Microsoft Q&A Instead of having the actual Table of Contents that has been built out for a template document, I am seeing "{ TOC \o "1-3" \l \z \u }" and instead of seeing page numbers at the bottom of pages, I am seeing "{ PAGE \8 MERGEFORMAT }". In all my years of working in Word, I have never seen this happen.
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