What's that little gray bracket?

[Colin Higbie]

In word, in several places, I see gray brackets - [ and ]. They look just
like standard 12 point square brackets in the text, except they are light
gray, like a header or footer, but they are not part of a header or footer.
I have no idea where the came from. I don't seem able to delete them - they
move with paragraph marks. I did delete one or more once (to my surprise),
but all I did was hit the delete key, that doesn't work now.

I assume those must signify something. Can anyone tell me what?

Thanks,
Colin

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi Colin,

They're bookmarks. Also, if there's no text at all between the ends of the
bookmark, the brackets overlap and look like a gray capital I.

If you don't want to see the brackets, go to Tools > Options > View and
uncheck the Bookmarks option. It's a good idea to display them while you're
editing if you don't want to overwrite or delete your bookmarks
accidentally. The you can turn them off for reading. They never print.

 

[Colin Higbie]

Wow, I'm actually even more confused now. You are right - if I uncheck
Bookmarks in View Options, they go away. But I don't understand why they are
there in the first place. This is a large document (about 250 pages so far)
and it has a TOC. But other than any automatic bookmarking it's done for the
TOC (does it do that for the hyperlinks in the TOC?) I have not inserted any
bookmarks. Stranger than that, they don't seem to line up with any
particular styles or section breaks, though they always appear at style
changes.

That is, sometimes an opening bracket might appear before, say, Heading 4,
and the closing bracket, before a Heading 3, but most times they are not
before those headings. None seem to appear in the middle of a paragraph or
between paragraphs of the same style.

I do use many Cross References in the document, but those always point to
Captions or Chapter Headings (never to a heading 3 or 4).

How did those bookmarks get there? Do I need them if I'm not knowingly using
bookmarks? I swear I've sometimes seen them appear in print too (at least
the one that appears at the very beginning, on the title page, before any
other text).

By the way, I wrote the entire doc from scratch and no one else has edited
it. I've tried hard to stick to using styles and proper procedures for
formatting to keep it clean. Did I make a mistake?

Thanks,
Colin

Hi Colin,

They're bookmarks. Also, if there's no text at all between the ends of the
bookmark, the brackets overlap and look like a gray capital I.

If you don't want to see the brackets, go to Tools > Options > View and
uncheck the Bookmarks option. It's a good idea to display them while
you're
editing if you don't want to overwrite or delete your bookmarks
accidentally. The you can turn them off for reading. They never print.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP

In word, in several places, I see gray brackets - [ and ]. They look
just like standard 12 point square brackets in the text, except they
are light gray, like a header or footer, but they are not part of a
header or footer. I have no idea where the came from. I don't seem
able to delete them - they move with paragraph marks. I did delete
one or more once (to my surprise), but all I did was hit the delete
key, that doesn't work now.

I assume those must signify something. Can anyone tell me what?

Thanks,
Colin

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Bookmarks created by the TOC and cross-references are usually invisible; you
won't even see them in the Insert | Bookmark dialog unless you check the box
for "Hidden bookmarks." So go to Insert | Bookmark and clear that check box
and see what's listed. You can then use Go To (Ctrl+G) to go to a specific
bookmark to see where it's located. My guess is that if you haven't inserted
them intentionally, it won't hurt to remove them (which you can do through
the Insert | Bookmark dialog).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

Wow, I'm actually even more confused now. You are right - if I uncheck
Bookmarks in View Options, they go away. But I don't understand why they are
there in the first place. This is a large document (about 250 pages so far)
and it has a TOC. But other than any automatic bookmarking it's done for the
TOC (does it do that for the hyperlinks in the TOC?) I have not inserted any
bookmarks. Stranger than that, they don't seem to line up with any
particular styles or section breaks, though they always appear at style
changes.

That is, sometimes an opening bracket might appear before, say, Heading 4,
and the closing bracket, before a Heading 3, but most times they are not
before those headings. None seem to appear in the middle of a paragraph or
between paragraphs of the same style.

I do use many Cross References in the document, but those always point to
Captions or Chapter Headings (never to a heading 3 or 4).

How did those bookmarks get there? Do I need them if I'm not knowingly using
bookmarks? I swear I've sometimes seen them appear in print too (at least
the one that appears at the very beginning, on the title page, before any
other text).

By the way, I wrote the entire doc from scratch and no one else has edited
it. I've tried hard to stick to using styles and proper procedures for
formatting to keep it clean. Did I make a mistake?

Thanks,
Colin

Hi Colin,

They're bookmarks. Also, if there's no text at all between the ends of the
bookmark, the brackets overlap and look like a gray capital I.

If you don't want to see the brackets, go to Tools > Options > View and
uncheck the Bookmarks option. It's a good idea to display them while
you're
editing if you don't want to overwrite or delete your bookmarks
accidentally. The you can turn them off for reading. They never print.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP

In word, in several places, I see gray brackets - [ and ]. They look
just like standard 12 point square brackets in the text, except they
are light gray, like a header or footer, but they are not part of a
header or footer. I have no idea where the came from. I don't seem
able to delete them - they move with paragraph marks. I did delete
one or more once (to my surprise), but all I did was hit the delete
key, that doesn't work now.

I assume those must signify something. Can anyone tell me what?

Thanks,
Colin

 

[Colin Higbie]

Thanks, that seems to have worked. Any idea what happened?

There were 7 of them. Each had a name like OLE_LINK1, OLE_LINK2, etc. Where
did they come from?

Also, why does a bookmark have an open and a close bracket - isn't a
bookmark a point, not a begin and an end?

Thanks again,
Colin

Bookmarks created by the TOC and cross-references are usually invisible;
you
won't even see them in the Insert | Bookmark dialog unless you check the
box
for "Hidden bookmarks." So go to Insert | Bookmark and clear that check
box
and see what's listed. You can then use Go To (Ctrl+G) to go to a specific
bookmark to see where it's located. My guess is that if you haven't
inserted
them intentionally, it won't hurt to remove them (which you can do through
the Insert | Bookmark dialog).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup
so
all may benefit.

Wow, I'm actually even more confused now. You are right - if I uncheck
Bookmarks in View Options, they go away. But I don't understand why they are
there in the first place. This is a large document (about 250 pages so far)
and it has a TOC. But other than any automatic bookmarking it's done for the
TOC (does it do that for the hyperlinks in the TOC?) I have not inserted any
bookmarks. Stranger than that, they don't seem to line up with any
particular styles or section breaks, though they always appear at style
changes.

That is, sometimes an opening bracket might appear before, say, Heading
4,
and the closing bracket, before a Heading 3, but most times they are not
before those headings. None seem to appear in the middle of a paragraph
or
between paragraphs of the same style.

I do use many Cross References in the document, but those always point to
Captions or Chapter Headings (never to a heading 3 or 4).

How did those bookmarks get there? Do I need them if I'm not knowingly using
bookmarks? I swear I've sometimes seen them appear in print too (at least
the one that appears at the very beginning, on the title page, before any
other text).

By the way, I wrote the entire doc from scratch and no one else has
edited
it. I've tried hard to stick to using styles and proper procedures for
formatting to keep it clean. Did I make a mistake?

Thanks,
Colin

Hi Colin,

They're bookmarks. Also, if there's no text at all between the ends of the
bookmark, the brackets overlap and look like a gray capital I.

If you don't want to see the brackets, go to Tools > Options > View and
uncheck the Bookmarks option. It's a good idea to display them while
you're
editing if you don't want to overwrite or delete your bookmarks
accidentally. The you can turn them off for reading. They never print.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP

Colin Higbie wrote:
In word, in several places, I see gray brackets - [ and ]. They look
just like standard 12 point square brackets in the text, except they
are light gray, like a header or footer, but they are not part of a
header or footer. I have no idea where the came from. I don't seem
able to delete them - they move with paragraph marks. I did delete
one or more once (to my surprise), but all I did was hit the delete
key, that doesn't work now.

I assume those must signify something. Can anyone tell me what?

Thanks,
Colin

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

As Jay pointed out, a bookmark can be a point, in which case it looks
like ][, but a bookmark can also enclose text. This allows you to replicate
the contents of the bookmark elsewhere (that's basically the way TOCs and
cross-references work). I'm not sure what would generate these OLE_LINK
bookmarks, but it would appear that parts of your file might have been used
by some other document or app. I find one reference in the KB to an "OLE
Link Field" in Word, suggesting that it is created by linking an object such
as an Excel spreadsheet, but this doesn't explain how a field would have
become reduced to a bookmark.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

Thanks, that seems to have worked. Any idea what happened?

There were 7 of them. Each had a name like OLE_LINK1, OLE_LINK2, etc. Where
did they come from?

Also, why does a bookmark have an open and a close bracket - isn't a
bookmark a point, not a begin and an end?

Thanks again,
Colin

Bookmarks created by the TOC and cross-references are usually invisible;
you
won't even see them in the Insert | Bookmark dialog unless you check the
box
for "Hidden bookmarks." So go to Insert | Bookmark and clear that check
box
and see what's listed. You can then use Go To (Ctrl+G) to go to a specific
bookmark to see where it's located. My guess is that if you haven't
inserted
them intentionally, it won't hurt to remove them (which you can do through
the Insert | Bookmark dialog).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup
so
all may benefit.

Wow, I'm actually even more confused now. You are right - if I uncheck
Bookmarks in View Options, they go away. But I don't understand why

they
are

there in the first place. This is a large document (about 250 pages so far)
and it has a TOC. But other than any automatic bookmarking it's done

for
the

TOC (does it do that for the hyperlinks in the TOC?) I have not

inserted
any

bookmarks. Stranger than that, they don't seem to line up with any
particular styles or section breaks, though they always appear at style
changes.

That is, sometimes an opening bracket might appear before, say, Heading
4,
and the closing bracket, before a Heading 3, but most times they are not
before those headings. None seem to appear in the middle of a paragraph
or
between paragraphs of the same style.

I do use many Cross References in the document, but those always point to
Captions or Chapter Headings (never to a heading 3 or 4).

How did those bookmarks get there? Do I need them if I'm not knowingly using
bookmarks? I swear I've sometimes seen them appear in print too (at least
the one that appears at the very beginning, on the title page, before any
other text).

By the way, I wrote the entire doc from scratch and no one else has
edited
it. I've tried hard to stick to using styles and proper procedures for
formatting to keep it clean. Did I make a mistake?

Thanks,
Colin




Hi Colin,

They're bookmarks. Also, if there's no text at all between the ends

of
the

bookmark, the brackets overlap and look like a gray capital I.

If you don't want to see the brackets, go to Tools > Options > View and
uncheck the Bookmarks option. It's a good idea to display them while
you're
editing if you don't want to overwrite or delete your bookmarks
accidentally. The you can turn them off for reading. They never print.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP

Colin Higbie wrote:
In word, in several places, I see gray brackets - [ and ]. They look
just like standard 12 point square brackets in the text, except they
are light gray, like a header or footer, but they are not part of a
header or footer. I have no idea where the came from. I don't seem
able to delete them - they move with paragraph marks. I did delete
one or more once (to my surprise), but all I did was hit the delete
key, that doesn't work now.

I assume those must signify something. Can anyone tell me what?

Thanks,
Colin

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Some people have reported that Word 2003 tends to spontaneously generate OLE
Links, maybe on cutting and pasting? (I've seen the same in MacWord 2004,
but it doesn't seem to affect everyone to the same degree) There have been
a couple reports on these groups.

 

[gv]

This behavior is somewhat insonsistent. If I copy some text to a
already opened mail message, for instance, no bookmark is generated.
However, if I copy text, then switch context to Outlook and create
new message, a new bookmark appears in Word even without pasting int
the new mail message! One of the more aggravating conseqences of thi
is that Word will prompt to save changes when you don't think you hav
made any changes (the addition of the phantom bookmark is the change)
Why is there no reference to this behavior in the Microsoft KB