spacings, unwanted changes? desperate question!

[Frontenac]

Hi, I apologize for this! Just a few minutes ago I was typing something and
must have pressed the wrong keys because for a second the program froze and
then when it recovered, all the words in my document had, instead of spaces
between them, dots. and then at the end of each line, there was this the
paragraph symbol (at least I think that's what it is). This symbol now also
appeared on each empty line. I closed the document without saving it, but
when I re-opened it things were the same! Then I checked my other documents
and they had all been changed. Basically they have all been ruined. I
restarted the computer and things were the same. Does anyone have any ideas
as to what may have happened or what I should do? I will be deeply indebted
to anyone who can help! Also, is there any way to disable the short-cut
commands? This might have led to this problem.

 

[Jay Freedman]

It isn't a "problem", it's just a feature you didn't know about. The
dots and ¶ marks are "nonprinting characters" that Word can turn on
and off. Oddly enough, the ¶ button on the toolbar turns them on and
off, and the Ctrl+Shift+8 key combination (which is probably what you
pressed) also turns them on and off.

You can indeed remove the shortcut -- see
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/AsgnCmdOrMacroToHotkey.htm
(the Remove button in the Customize Keyboard dialog will do the job).

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

 

[Chad Williams]

Try the following: Click on "Control" + *. In other words, hold the control
button down while you click on * (or Shift+8).

My guess is that you don't know what the Show/Hide button is -- that would
do the same thing. The "Show/Hide" button is on your tool bar and is a
paragraph symbol.

And, by the way, if I'm correct about this, nothing at all happened to your
document; it's just a "view" option.

 

[Frontenac]

Thank you to both of you!!!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

For some reasons why you might want to be able to see nonprinting
characters, see http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NonPrintChars.htm

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org