Hello,



Weeks ago I must have changed something in Word 2016 for Mac, and since that time I'm seeing gray horizontal lines on the screen in Print Layout and Web Layout which are drawn after each paragraph, one line after each paragraph. These lines appear in all documents, also in the templates that came with Word. The lines are not printed though; they also don't appear in the Print Dialog when I choose "Print" from the File menu.

I faintly remember playing with Borders and Shading when this happened, but I'm not sure. Anyway, I have tried everything I can think of to get rid of these lines: I have deleted the Normal.dotm template from the Templates folder as well as the Word preferences file in the ~Library –> Preferences, but to no avail.

Can anyone tell me how to get rid of these lines?


Word v16.16.2
Office 2016 for Mac
macOS X 10.12.6 (= Sierra)

Attached Images

Horizontal lines.png (95.5 KB, 37 views)

You have the Word option set to show text boundaries - if the Mac version is similar to the PC version, the setting is in File > Options > Advanced > Show Document Content.

__________________
Graham Mayor - MS MVP (Word) (2002-2019)
Visit my web site for more programming tips and ready made processes www.gmayor.com

On the Mac the command chain likely starts with Word > Preferences

On the Mac, the Preferences are in the Word menu (Word –> Preferences), but unfortunately there is nothing there that seems to correspond to Advanced > Show Document Content.

Could you be so kind and upload a screenshot of the setting which is responsible for the pesky lines I'm trying to get rid of? That would be of great help.

In the meantime, here is the Border and Shading pane that my intuition says might perhaps have something to do with "text boundaries".

Attached Images

	1.png (55.5 KB, 33 views)
	2.png (61.6 KB, 31 views)

Look in Edit and View.
You are looking for "Text Boundaries."


There is no exact one-to-one correlation of the dialogs.


Here is the Windows version.


Here is an earlier Windows version which may track more closely with the Mac version.

Thanks for the screenshots. I assume the first one is from Office 365 (MS Word 16.16.2) If that's the case, then it's amazing how different the PC and Mac versions are. I thought Microsoft had managed to give both a similar interface, but I realize now that they look indeed like two different programs.

Anyway, there is absolutely no setting for "text boundaries" in my version. The format menu contains "Document", and choosing that reveals the "Borders" button, which opens the 'Borders and Shading' pane of which I included a screenshot in my second post.

Isn't somebody here who is using the Mac version and might be able to help?

Attached Images

	1.png (50.9 KB, 22 views)
	2.png (60.0 KB, 23 views)

Look in the Word Preferences dialog box. Elsewhere, someone suggested Preferences > View > Text Boundaries. Does that help?

(Sorry, I'm on Windows too.)

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Look on my page:
Text Boundaries Display in Microsoft Word

You were all right. I finally found the "Text boundaries". They were in Word –> Preferences –> View.
Thank you guys. You are great!

I see that some threads in the forum have a green "solved" icon at the beginning. Since my problem has now been solved, I thought it might be a good idea to delete the question mark icon and insert a "solved" icon instead. How do I do that?

I thought I better ask before I screw up everything …

Edit your original post and click the Go Advanced button.
You can give a reason for editing and change the Icon to "Solved."


Thanks for asking.