On my system I see two box characters where what you describe as 'white space' occurs. If you select one of those characters, then press Ctrl-H, the Find/Replace dialogue should open with that as a 'Find' character. In my case, it appears as an arrow. Clearing the Replace character, if necessary, then choosing 'Replace All', will delete all those characters from your document.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]