Hi to everybody. I have Microsoft Office 2003 on Windows 7 32-bit. From time to time, for reasons unknown to me, my Word paragraphs may follow a strange pattern, with unwanted spaces on the beginning or/and the end and blocked. If I press the "Show/Hide" button of Word, there appears a strange symbol (a small circle with 4 tiny sort of rays) at beginning and the end of paragraphs. What is it, and how can I remove it? It seems to be responsible for the blocking and is not deletable. Thanks.

The symbols you describe sound like end-of-cell and/or end-of-row markers of Word tables. With the insertion point inside such a paragraph, do you see additional options on the Table menu?

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Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

It seems to me that you hit the point: actually, in "those" paragraphs there appears additional options in the table menu (= divide tables // divide cells) and in the context right clicking (all options about tables and cells). How can I disactivate all this?

Somehow you have added a table to your document. Perhaps you copied and pasted content from the web (web pages often use border-less tables for layout).

To get rid of the table, click Table | Convert | Table to Text.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

... Perhaps you copied and pasted content from the web ...... True. ...To get rid of the table, click Table | Convert | Table to Text... It works. Thank you very much.

You are welcome. Thanks for the follow-up.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional