Given it's "an Job Vacancy Application Form in Microsoft Word 97 - 2003", it won't have content controls. Rather, it will have formfields and that, in turn, means you can't change the formatting. Most likely, the formfield(s) you're having problems with was/were not designed with paragraph breaks in mind. Try using line breaks (Shift-Enter) instead.

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