blue formatting cues?! Aggh!

[sycsummit]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Processor: Intel So I must have gotten in a hurry today in class and hit a keystroke unintentionally... now I have blue formatting cues (I don't know what else to call them, I did a few searches but I'm sure the answer is out there) all over every document I open.

They don't print out or anything, but it's incredibly annoying. I have all these symbols now for invisible formatting characters... There is a little dot representing every single space in the document, a blue arrow for every tab, and a paragraph symbol for every return. Also, looks like every line is bulleted. Driving me insane. What did I do to turn this mode on, and more importantly, how do I turn it off??

Thanks...

 

[AlanMac]

Hi, you have engaged the "Show all non printing characters" mode. To deselect click on the Show icon on the Standard toolbar, it looks like a paragraph mark. IfIt also says Show below it (10th icon from lefton astandard rtoolbar that has not been modified). If you cannot see the icon names below them right click on a grey area of that toolbar and select "Icon and Text".

Now, the standard keyboard assignments do not assign "Show" to any key so unless you have assigned one yourself, I doubt that because you have this problem then I think have just clicked on the button by mistake.

Alan

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Alan;

<snip>

Now, the standard keyboard assignments do not assign "Show" to any key so
unless you have assigned one yourself, I doubt that because you have this
problem then I think have just clicked on the button by mistake.

<snip>

Yeah they do Command+8 toggles the non-printing characters.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[CyberTaz]

Alan has pretty much answered your question but you may want to review the
following article on the non-printing characters. They're a valuable asset
in many respects & can be toggled on/off using Command+8 (MacWord):

http://word.mvps.org/faqs/formatting/NonPrintChars.htm

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[sycsummit]

thanks guys. Cmd + 8 fixed it.

 

[Monika]

Ah this had just happened to me in class as well. Thanks for the above answers for help. Command + 8 fixed the problem.