Show Hidden Characters

Created by James Collette, Modified on Thu, 10 Aug, 2023 at 8:28 AM by James Collette

A screenshot from Microsoft Word showing hidden characters

(Credit: Microsoft)

When Word isn’t acting as it should, you can only sort things out by seeing the invisible paragraph marks, tabs, section breaks, and other formatting marks that are causing the problem. Press Ctrl-Shift-8 in Windows or Command-8 on a Mac. You can remember this easily because the 8 key also has an asterisk, which can remind you of a symbol.

You can also find this function in the Home tab. Its icon is a paragraph mark. But you can add this to the Quick Action toolbar (see tip 5 above) by adding the “Show All” command.

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