Paragraph marks appear in deleted text in Track Changes

[AnneHY]

In the middle of editing a Word document with Track Changes on, paragraph and indent symbols began appearing in the deleted text. Paragraph symbols were off (I never use them) in the body of the text. I have tried all the obvious things in Word, have updated my Mac OS and uninstalled then reinstalled Office. At the time, I was running an old version of Word. I now have 16.57.

The only thing I did differently from normal in my use of Word was to use the ^ symbol. I got it both by (command i) and (shift 6). I sometimes accidentally typed another symbol eg ' alongside it.

I would very much appreciate help with this.

[#2]

@AnneHY 

Check the settings in Preferences for "Show Non-Printing Characters"

[#3]

@Doug_Robbins_Word_MVPThanks for the suggestion. Sadly, I have checked this (repeatedly, actually). I have it always set to off as I never want paragraph marks.

[#4]

Can you upload a copy of the document so that we can investigate the issue.

[#5]

Certainly will, thanks. I just can't see how to do that.

[#6]

@AnneHY 

To upload a document, you will have to open the Reply in a separate window and then you can make use of the "Drag and drop here or browse files to attach" link below the reply field. 

[#7]

Thank you@Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP 

[#8]

@AnneHY The revision is showing what actually happened.  When it is an empty paragraph that is deleted, that is shown in the revisions as "Deleted: ¶"

In the original document, there were two empty paragraphs between the paragraphs that contain text shown below

and one of them was deleted

[#9]

Yes.
It's odd because I always have "show/hide formatting" off. There is no reason for these formatting marks to show up in deleted text and I'd like to get rid of them. It clutters that text and makes it hard to read - something I frequently need to do.

[#10]

@AnneHY The Pilcrow symbol shows as what was deleted to indicate that it was an empty paragraph, or some text including the end of the paragraph was deleted so that two paragraphs become one.

In the following example, if the shaded text that spans from one paragraph into the next is deleted

so that the two paragraphs become one, the pilcrow symbol is included in the representation of the deleted text to signify that the text that was deleted was originally part of two paragraphs

[#11]

My apologies. I was not clear in my initial question.
I want to remove the paragraph and other formatting marks in deleted text. I have never had them and don't want them now as they make that text difficult to read.

[#12]

The formatting marks that appear in the deleted text are there because they were also deleted!

The only way to prevent them from being included in the deleted text would be to turn off Track Changes, the with the display of not printing characters turned on so that you can see the pilcrows (¶) in the text that want to delete, delete those ¶, then turn Track Changes back on and delete the text itself so that you are then not deleting the paragraph marks when you delete the text.

I know that is probably impractical but it is the only way.

[#13]

Doug, thank you for all the time you're spending on this.

I cannot delete the pilcrows in the main text individually except by deleting the paragraphing (thus running all the text together on one line). Perhaps that's what you meant.

I just don't understand why this (pilcrows and other formatting appearing in text deleted from a body of text with pilcrows off) started in the first place. If I knew that, I could reverse the glitch in the system.

Is there a way to ask a Word developer to see if tehy have any ideas about why this malfunction occurred and how to fix it?

[#14]

@AnneHY  It is NOT a glitch or a malfunction!  When the revision involves deleting a paragraph, or the end part of paragraph so that the remaining text is merged with the next paragraph, word has ALWAYS shown the pilcrow representing the end of the paragraph that was deleted in the balloon.  Here is a screen shot from Word 2003

[#15]

Interesting. I've been using Word for decades and never had this occur. I must have had the glitch myself all along.
Oh well, it seems like I'm stuck with it then. What a blob.
Thank you so much for all your help and time on this, Doug. I appreciate it.