Annoying line across the bottom of a page

P

Peyton Todd

Hello. Suddenly there has appeared a line at the bottom of one of my pages in
Word 2003. It does not appear in Normal View, but it does appear in Print
Layout View, and in a PDF which gets built from the document. I seem to
remember encountering this problem before, and a Word MVP identified it as a
section break, but when I check out how to delete section breaks in Word
Help, I'm told simply to select the section break and press Delete. But
apparently the line itself cannot be selected, and when I select a block of
text spanning it and press Delete, the text goes away but the line remains.

Thanks for your help.
 
P

Peyton Todd

Hi Suzanne. How I wish that turned out to be true. Alas, selecting the
paragraph above the line, going to Borders and Shading and choosing None
doesn't get rid of the line. (Borders and Shading already said 'None' anyway.)

Also, it doesn't look the same as one of those borders. To test it, I added
a paragraph, then some dashes below it and pressed Enter. The line which
appeared was darker than the one I'm trying to get rid of, which is gray, and
it appeared directly below the paragraph, while the line I'm trying to get
rid of is nearly an inch (roughly two lines) below it.

If you turn click the pilcrow tool to see carriage returns, etc., it turns
out that there is indeed an extra carriage return (but just one) after the
paragraph and before the line (that is: there's the carriage return which
ends the paragraph, then another for a blank line. However, when you select
the one for the blank line and apply the Borders and Shading = None
procedure, it doesn't work for that either.

Other ideas?
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

Does the line print? Is it a section break? If it's a section break, this
will be easier to see in Normal view.

If all else fails, send me the doc (or the disturbing portion of it), and
I'll take a look.
 
P

Peyton Todd

Also, when you delete the extra carriage return for the blank line, the
offending gray line reaching all the way across the page does not move. It
stays where it is, the equivalent of what would be two lines below the
paragraph. And when I continue that paragraph by typing extra lines into it,
so that it goes on to the next page, the line still stays in place. It even
stays there right through the 'orphan control' feature, which moves the last
two lines to the next page so there won't be an orphan there, then moves one
of them back up as soon as it has enough text to do so. So it seems to belong
to the page somehow. The page-ending pilcrow occurs below the line.
 
P

Peyton Todd

I just sent you another message about it, before I received this one from
you. In response to this message: Yes, it prints, not only to a real printer,
but to the PDF file I'm building from this document, which is what matters.
And it must not be a section break, since it does not appear at all in Normal
View.

I would love to send you the document, thanks. Where do I send it?
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

You can derive my email address by clicking on my name (or something) in the
message as you're seeing it--whatever appears to be hyperlinked links to my
"profile" (if you were using a real newsreader, you'd see it "in the
clear").



Peyton Todd said:
I just sent you another message about it, before I received this one from
you. In response to this message: Yes, it prints, not only to a real printer,
but to the PDF file I'm building from this document, which is what matters.
And it must not be a section break, since it does not appear at all in Normal
View.

I would love to send you the document, thanks. Where do I send it?
Click to expand...
 
G

garfield-n-odie [MVP]

My guess is that the line is a footnote separator or a footnote
continuation separator possibly left over from incorrectly deleting a
footnote on that page. Quoting from Word 2002 Help (which should also
apply to Word 2003):

Change or remove a footnote or endnote separator

Microsoft Word separates document text from footnotes and endnotes with
a short horizontal line called a note separator. If a note overflows
onto the next page, Word prints a longer line called a note continuation
separator. You can customize separators by adding borders, text, or
graphics.

1. Switch to normal view.
2. On the View menu, click Footnotes. If your document contains both
footnotes and endnotes, a message appears. Click "View footnote area" or
"View endnote area", and then click OK.
3. In the note pane, click the type of separator you want to change or
remove in the "Notes" box:
• To change the separator that appears between the document text and
notes, click "Footnote separator" or "Endnote separator".
• To change the separator for notes that continue from the previous
page, click "Footnote continuation separator" or "Endnote continuation
separator".
4. Select the separator and make changes:
• To remove the separator, press DELETE.
• To edit the separator, insert a Clip Art divider line or type text.
To restore the default separator, click Reset.

Notes
• Note text does not appear with the separator.
• To view the continuation separator as it appears in the printed
document, click Print Layout View on the horizontal scroll bar.
• In the browser, custom note separators appear as short horizontal
lines.
 
P

Peyton Todd

You got it! Actually, there was no need for me to get into what footnote
separators were being used - it was, quite simply, a footnote which
overlapped to the next page. Why? Because it had an extra carriage return at
the bottom of it.

Thanks, garfiend-n-oldie!
 
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