We can now see all the paragraph marks, indents, and several different section breaks that are making our text do strange things. Mouse, simply click the Show/Hide button on the Home tab.įor example, in the document below, I have a few strange things happening – text in columns with strange gaps in the column, and the text has stopped halfway down the page, even though there is more following on the next page.See Understand the Show All markers in WordĪs with most things in Word, you can use either a keyboard shortcut or the mouse to see the hidden formatting characters. Tabs, Section Breaks, Paragraph Marks even Spaces are all exposed by Show All. Show all is the easy way to see all the underlying formatting to help you figure out what’s happening. At some point commonsense prevailed and now ‘Show All’ is on the Home tab, Paragraph section. Early versions of Word had a ‘Show All’ option but it was hidden away because Microsoft believed their software was so good, such a tool was not necessary. Microsoft Word was designed to hide all the formatting and technicalities (WYSIWYG). That’s where ‘Show All’ becomes essential. It helps figure out what’s going on when the layout doesn’t behave. If you are working on a Word document with complex formatting, sometimes you need to see the hidden characters and unseen workings.
