There may be times when you get very frustrated with MS Word not behaving as it should. Is it an update that has gone wrong? Is it a virus? Or is it just you?
If you are experiencing difficulties, I suggest that you save a copy of this document as it stands, using [Save As], so that you can always go back to the original and start again if things go badly wrong. Or have a copy to refer to and teach others.
First problem
One of the things that sometimes happens is that when you’re in a document you cannot put in a hard return. i.e. pressing enter to create the start of a new paragraph.
If this is happening to you or any other strange phenomenon, try this trick.
Select the whole document, using [Ctrl+A], as it probably happens in more places than you think. Cut it, using [Ctrl+X] and paste it, using [Ctrl+V] in the same place. Voila! It works. Why – I don’t know. It just resets itself and works well again.
Second problem
Another problem is when you receive a document from someone, and you open it to find strange spacing in the paragraphs.
Here is a few examples.
This sometimes happens when the document was created in a form and the copied text is then used in this document. This could be your answer.
- Select the whole document
- Right click anywhere in the selected text
- Select [Remove Content Control]
- An alternative for this is that there are too many spaces in the document, then use the [Find and Replace] feature. Find and replace two spaces with one space and either replace one at a time or if confident that you want EVERY case of two spaces replaced with one the select [Replace all]. You may need to repeat this for areas that have more than 2 spaces.
Highlight the two spaces that look like this when non printing characters are showing.
Third problem
Another example is when you copy text from somewhere, maybe an internet document, when you paste it into a document, Word cannot change the style of the text to normal. One way to solve this problem is to select it all again and change it to any other [style] you have available in your [Styles area] and then change it back to [Normal Style]. Somehow it does at it told this time. 
If that doesn’t work try this;
- Select the document copy and paste it into Notepad or any simple text creator application other than Word itself.
- In Notepad select the text again and copy and paste it to a new Word document. Text is now in [MS Word normal style] and can be changed to whichever style you desire.
Hope these tips have helped you solve the frustrating problems you may encounter.
Find only what you need in your document. Replace with different formatting.
