WD97: Document Contains Extra Paragraph Marks or Boxes

When you open a Word 97 document, there are extra paragraph marks or boxes in the document. If the document contains a table, there are paragraph marks or boxes in front of the end of the row marker for every row within a table.

This behavior may occur when the following conditions are true:

• You have opened and edited a Text Only or a Word 2.0 document in Word 97.
• You have the AutoRecover save option turned on and have edited the document long enough for an AutoRecover file to be created.
• You save the document as a Word 97 document, close, and reopen the document.

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article. This problem was corrected in Microsoft Office 97 Service Release 2 (SR-2).

For additional information about SR-2, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

To work around this problem, use one of the following methods:

Method 1: Convert the Table to Text (use if your document contains a table)

1. Place your insertion point in the table.
2. On the Table menu, click Select Table.
3. On the Table menu, click Convert Table to Text, select Tabs, and click OK.
4. With the text still selected, on the Table menu, click Convert Text to Table, select Tabs, and click OK.
5. The unwanted paragraph marks should now be gone.

Method 2: Save the Document as RTF

1. On the File menu, click Save As.
2. In the Save As Type drop-down list, select Rich Text Format, and click OK.
3. Close and reopen the file.