It occurs because of how the object you're copying is formatted. Re the second issue, I suspect what you're getting is the creation of some bookmarks. This happens somethimes in situations that are not well undestood, where Word assumes that whatever is being copied is going to be linked to the destination. If that's what's happening here, going to Insert|Bookmark should reveal a bookmark named OLE_LINK# where the # is a number. You can delete the bookmark and the brackets will disappear with it.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Paul, the problem with the brackets is the bookmarking you mentioned. Did what you suggested and the brackets were deleted. Thanks.

Back to the first problem of the boxes. As I mentioned before, they print; thus, have to be removed. I start with unboxed data in either a properties or table cell. If I copy from any of these locations and paste it in the document boundary or table cell, that destination text is boxed. If I paste special like you suggested the text is unboxed. I have 26 tables in which three cells per table have different data. selecting the boxed data in a cell and; cut, paste special, unformatted text has corrected the problem with one cell exception. That cell data will not unbox. Will have to work on that.