Word 2013 - Not showing spaces until next non-space character typed

hopmedic

Active member
Apr 27, 2011
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This is really weird... I started working on a Word document at work, using Word 2010. I emailed it to myself and opened it in Word 2013, and now I get triangles at the start of each paragraph, that when you click them they rotate 45 degrees as if they were expanding/collapsing, but nothing expands or collapses, and when I type a space, it does not show up until the next non-space character is typed. It is quite aggravating, and I can't figure out how to switch it back to normal.

Anyone have any ideas?
 

Laura Knotek

Retired Moderator
Mar 31, 2012
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What format was the original document? Are you using compatibility mode in Word 2013?
 

hopmedic

Active member
Apr 27, 2011
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Ummm.... In 2010 it was created as a docx, from an APA style template downloaded from office.com. When I saved it from Outlook 2013, it gave me some kind of message about compatibility, but I just clicked through. Something weird, though... When I went through afterward and added a reference to my references page, it worked as expected on the refs page. But still weird in the body. Has to be something about how 2013 handled whatever format the body was in, but not the refs, since it acted normal in 2010. Weird.
 

Matails1

New member
Jul 3, 2014
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Hit (Ctrl+*) to show your paragraph marks. You will notice you have a Section Break at the point this issue is occurring. The section break (for some reason) wont let Word display a space until a non-space character has been entered. If you hit 'Enter' before the section break this should fix the issue.
 

Jason Wenzel1

New member
Feb 9, 2015
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Thanks for the Ctrl+* tip, I really couldn't figure that one out! I'm working on a new laptop and it's doing some weird things - so I wasn't sure if that was a software or hardware problem. Indeed you were right about the section break keeping the spaces from showing up.
 

nickthegreek93

New member
Apr 24, 2017
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Hit (Ctrl+*) to show your paragraph marks. You will notice you have a Section Break at the point this issue is occurring. The section break (for some reason) wont let Word display a space until a non-space character has been entered. If you hit 'Enter' before the section break this should fix the issue.
Sorry to bump such an old thread but I just wanted to say thank you. I could tell this bug was related to section breaks but I couldn'd quite fix it. Basically the section break needs to be in its own line otherwise space and enter won't register on-screen until you type the next character (which is pretty darn annoying).
 

Bunyamin Tetik

New member
Sep 29, 2017
1
0
0
I fix the same problem with deleting all glitchy part. You can try to find normal line and delete until there.
 

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