End of paragraph sometimes ignored

[Linda]

Someone showed me a Word 2000 document that looked fine when the Show/Hide button is depressed to show the nonprinting symbols. However, when Show/Hide is off and hiding the nonprinting symbols or in Print Preview or on the printed copy, the ends of some paragraphs were completely ignored so that two paragraphs were run together into a single paragraph.

If we deleted and reinserted the "bad" paragraph marks when showing the nonprinting characters, we could correct the problem.

I'm wondering what could cause this strange behavior and how to prevent it. Thanks!

[Rajesh]

The "bad" paragraph marks you deleted were marked as hidden (in Format-Font Dialog Box).
When you inserted a new paragraph mark in its place, the new mark was not marked as hidden.

You can test the correctness of this by pressing the Show/Hide button to show the paragraph marks, and block-marking only the paragraph mark and making it as Format-Font-Hidden. Then, press the Show/Hide button again and see what happens.

[silverback]

Rajesh
This topic of hidden text came up in another thread - the Chris Greaves one about footnotes in columns. I've worked out that setting this attribute hides the selected text <img src=/S/clever.gif border=0 alt=clever width=15 height=15> but what is the purpose of the feature? In what circumstances would it be used and why?

[KB MacKenzie]

Say you have a document with various levels of Headings, only the first and second of which you want in the TOC. It would look something like this:

Using Hidden Paragraphs<font color=red>(formatted with Heading 1 style)</font color=red>

Purpose<font color=red>(formatted with Heading 2 style, and followed by a hidden paragraph mark)</font color=red>: This is the rest of the paragraph which explains what's indicated in subheading "Purpose" above<font color=red>(formatted with Body Text style)</font color=red>.

In your TOC you don't want everything from the previous paragraph to appear so just before the colon you insert a hidden paragraph mark and apply the "Body Text" style to the "paragraph" following the Heading 2 paragraph. The end result will be a TOC which only lists the headings and subheadings, but visually on paper the subheading is a lead-on heading.

Table of Contents
<pre>Using Hidden Paragraphs . . . . . . 1
Purpose. . . . . . . . . . . . . 1</pre>


This method saves paper and can make a visually more appealing printed document. Caveat: Turn off show/hide before updating the TOC.

[silverback]

Wow! <img src=/S/cool.gif border=0 alt=cool width=15 height=15>
Thanks for that, Karen. I must admit it makes sense of a posting I read some time ago where there was lots of text along the lines of 'using the hidden paragraph method' but I didn't like to ask about it then as the topic was ongoing. This post seemed just about closed, so I plucked up courage and asked this time.
Gee, there is serious brain power out there in lounger land, and people are so generous about sharing it.
Thanks again