# What is up with these heave black lines in my Word document?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-up-with-these-heave-black-lines-in-my-word-document/117916>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 8, 2002, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-up-with-these-heave-black-lines-in-my-word-document/117916 "2002-07-08T14:58:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crankyasanoldman/32/11670_2.png) [@CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrankyAsAnOldMan)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2002, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-up-with-these-heave-black-lines-in-my-word-document/117916/1 "2002-07-08T14:58:48Z")

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I feel sheepish asking a software question here, but I’m somewhat desperate.

I have a Word document that occasionally inserts random black lines across the page or column. I didn’t draw them and they are not “underlines” and they are not borders. I try to highlight them but they aren’t grabbable by the cursor. They can’t be deleted by backspacing, either.

I can’t figure out how to get rid of them, but they are messing up my dissertation. Anyone have any experience with them? I am on a Mac, but some of the files were once Windows documents.

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**Author:** ![sigSEGV](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5a626/32.png) [@sigSEGV](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sigSEGV)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2002, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-up-with-these-heave-black-lines-in-my-word-document/117916/2 "2002-07-09T01:32:11Z")

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All I can tell you is that I’ve had the same problem with Word before (2000 I think). I don’t remember what I did to fix it. My only suggestion would be copying sections of the document into a blank document and hoping the lines don’t go with it.

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**Author:** ![dantheman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dantheman/32/9421_2.png) [@dantheman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dantheman)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2002, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-up-with-these-heave-black-lines-in-my-word-document/117916/3 "2002-07-09T01:55:18Z")

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I remember seeing those before, **Cranky**. Do you have the Drawing toolbar on? If so, try turning it off.

You say it’s with the current document - does it carry over to blank documents, too?

I took a quick look at Microsoft’s site, and couldn’t come up with anything. ☹

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**Author:** ![CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crankyasanoldman/32/11670_2.png) [@CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrankyAsAnOldMan)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2002, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-up-with-these-heave-black-lines-in-my-word-document/117916/4 "2002-07-09T03:45:57Z")

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Well, for those of you who can’t sleep at night wondering about my problem, I got my computer support person to look at it. There was some sort of border attached to the paragraph; it could only be turned off using something on the toolbar that I never use myself. It had her befuddled for awhile, too. Persistent little bugger.