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How to Get Rid of Paragraph Symbol in Outlook

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I have a user wiith a strange MS Outlook 2007 issue. By default, every time he creates a new email and clicks inside the body of the email, he sees the paragraph symbol ( ¶ ) at the beginning of every line.

I know that by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + 8 will cause the symbols to disappear or reappear in the email.

What I need assitance is how to configure Outlook to make the setting permanent such that clicking in the body of a new email does NOT show these symbols in every new email message by default.

I have alredy tried to hit SAVE and SAVEAS on the new email without typing anything in it. Still doesn't make the symbol hidden by default.

It's not a terrible serious issue, but it is a neusance to have to hit the control key combo on every new email not to see it.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Roger


Kristi1548
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Aug 15, 2012 at 12:48 UTC

You'll need to make the changes in Word most likely.  The user probably has Rich Text making Word the default editor for email messages.  In Word, go into the options and under display you will most likely find that the Paragraph marks are checked to be shown.  The other option would be to change the default message format to HTML under Option> Mail Format.

7 Replies

Kristi1548
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Aug 15, 2012 at 12:48 UTC

You'll need to make the changes in Word most likely.  The user probably has Rich Text making Word the default editor for email messages.  In Word, go into the options and under display you will most likely find that the Paragraph marks are checked to be shown.  The other option would be to change the default message format to HTML under Option> Mail Format.

Matt the IT Guy
Don Furu

There are two ways I have found to get rid of this problem for good.  This first is to turn off MS Word as your email editor.  First, click "Tools," then "Options" and finally "Mail Format." Uncheck "Use Microsoft Word to edit Email Messages."  If you cannot or don't want to do that you can turn off the formatting option in Word.  Click the "Office" button and navigate to "Word Options." Click "Display," and clear all the checked boxes for the formatting marks under "Always Show These Formatting Marks on the Screen."  Both of those options have worked for me in the past.

IT-Witch
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Aug 15, 2012 at 12:55 UTC

Go to Outlook > File > Options > Mail and under Compose messages, click Editor Options. Make sure Paragraph marks (and any others you don't want) are unselected in Display.

You can do this in Word also.

sellers

I may have it resolved using a combination of suggestions presented. Thanks much BTW!

Paragraphs were not turned on in MS Word.

I checked and resaved the default normal.dot and normal.dotx files in Word. No joy.

Changed the email format from HTML to Rich Text and saved the default email. No Joy

Changed it back to HTML and saved the default email. No Joy.

Closed Outlook and reopened it after making these changes and it now appears to be working correctly. Created several new emails and no paragraph symbols. Closed Outllok again and tried creating new emails and its still working as we wanted.

This user is happy now and I'm happy with his outcome.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Roger

Geoffrey1055

I'm having a similar issue, where none of the fixes described in this post have produced a permanent fix.

Whenever this user replies to an email, her cursor is parked right in front of the "From" in the historical information at the top of the thread, where it indicates who the previous sender was (see screenshot).  There's no dividing line and she has to hit enter/return once or twice and then arrow up to move the cursor away from the "From". If she hits any other key instead, it turns on the formatting marks.

I've tried all of the suggestions above, as well as deleted her mail profile, reinstalled MS Office 07, deleted the normal.dotm and normalemail.dotm files from her templates folder. Nothing changes this condition.

I just started here, and she says this started happening when my predecessor replaced her XP box with a new Win7. That's what led me to replace her mail profile, but it didn't help.

Geoffrey1055

Long story short, the solution was to clear a checkbox deep in the options.

Tools/Options/Mail Format Tab/Stationery and Fonts and then the

Font button under "Replying or forwarding messages". Clear the "Hidden"

box. (screenshot attached)

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How to Get Rid of Paragraph Symbol in Outlook

Source: https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/251320-outlook-paragraph-symbol-won-t-stay-gone