I was given a word document with a lot of paragraphs that are in this gray fieldbox. When I save the word document as pdf, the gray disappears but the brackets remain.

How can I turn this gray fieldbox/brackets off?



This could be a glitch from adding/deleting comments but I'm not super sure.

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I usually only see brackets like that when I'm working with bookmarks. But they are pretty easy to remove - so much so that other users have accidentally deleted them on me.

A search on the web found this - the suggestion that the file may have restriction on parts of the document to prevent them from being edited. That post is found in the Microsoft forum: Redirecting

Presumably, if you go to the Review tab on the ribbon and toggle Restrict Editing, it might go away if that's the cause.

Does Reveal Formatting (SHIFT + F1) show you anything? I just tested this on a bookmark, and though I could see the brackets, Reveal Formatting showed me nothing.

If you go under File/Options/Advanced, roughly 2/5 of the way down the Advanced panel there is Show document control. If you have "Show bookmarks" ticked, and Field shading set to "Always" you might try to unselect/change those to see if the problem goes away. It could be a field or cross-reference (gray shading) inside a bookmark [brackets], but I'm thinking it has more to do with restriction.

The weird thing for me is that it prints/converts to PDF with the brackets showing. None of my scenarios does that.

Going to Restrict Editing > unchecking "Editing Restrictions" > and Saying Yes to "Do you want to remove the ignored exceptions?" fixed it for me. Thank you so much!

Found this a little belatedly:

Redirecting

It does seem to do with protection in this case. But the answerer did say that usually those brackets shouldn't print, and they suggest some workarounds.

If you could attach a short Word file with these, someone here will be able to tell you exactly what they are. https://www.msofficeforums.com/173475-post3.html

If this is a field and not where your insertion point is, you have an option turned on to shade fields. Dealing with Fields in Microsoft Word
If it is a Content Control that has not been filled in, this is placeholder text.