Do the dotted lines print, or are they simply soft page breaks? They sound like a soft page break indicator.

Hi Undertow. I was hoping you'd write. Thanks. They print loud and UGLY. Any hints?

Jason, you say it's for a book project? That means different things I guess, but does it mean it's going to a publisher? Most books that are done now are either set/laid out in Adobe InDesign or Quark Express. I'm not sure any reputable publisher would print directly from Word as it's such an amazing piece of bloatware that shows up differently depending on who's looking at it and from what platform.

If you can, copy a bunch of text that includes the dotted line. Open a new blank document in Word and paste. Does the line show up again? If it does, try pasting in another text editor, I'm not that familiar with PCs and their apps, but there's probably a low budget word processor, Note Pad or some such. Does the dotted line show up when you paste into that?

For me, even though I have Word/Office albeit for Macs, I just stay away from it. For the times that I need to send someone a Word document, I'll either save it into a .doc format, or import it to Word. Actually, I send more PDFs thas .docs. You could also try saving it in PDF format to see if it shows up, but if you are able to print the line from Word, it'll probably show up in the PDF as well.

I'm sure there's someone here who can help, sorry to not be able to offer more.

barry

Hi Jason -

What version of Word is it? 2003 or 2007? I can try to help you with your problem.

Best,
Elliot

Hi Jason -

Please reference the following link, hopefully it'll help:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081002093452AAp4gA5

Thanks,

Elliot

Hi Jason -
It sounds like the line has been applied as formatting to a paragraph, or to a section. (In Word you can apply a line as a border above, below, or on the side of a paragraph, a section, a page, or the whole document.) To help narrow it down and remove the line, here's where I'd start (note I'm on a Mac, but the commands should be roughly equivalent.)
First, do a Save As so you're not working in your original file.
Then, click in a section of text where the line appears.
Go to Format>Document>Borders
--If the line has been applied as a border to the bottom of the paragraph you're clicked in, it will show up in the preview icon on the right.
--To remove the line, click directly on it.

If the line doesn't show up there, go to Format>Borders>Page Border, and see if the line has been applied to the section you're clicked in - again, in the preview icon. To remove it, click on it.

If that didn't work, go back out to the text and click in the text immediately following line. Cick on the Format>Borders pane and see if the line was applied as a border to the top of the paragraph, remove it by double-clicking it.

It sounds like you may also have some unwanted section or page breaks in there. Depending on how they've been inserted, you can remove those through the Format>Document command, or by deleting the section or page break characters in the text flow. But the section breaks may be important for your page numbering/chapter breaks. Hard to tell without looking at the file.

Good luck - I'll check back in a bit and see how you're doing!

Donna's response sounds promising but Barry's response is correct. Office 2007 is a not standard, Microsoft has lost that edge in the market. Adobe is standard, and eventually .odf will be even more standard. The long term solution to your problem is to drop Microsoft, who no longer creates usable or stable software, nor will they, due to their convoluted hierarchy of decision making.

The Vista/Office2007 combo is the worst product on the market right now for what you are doing, a 1998 version of wordpad would be more effective.

Search google for 'Office 2007 bugs' and it's a pretty convincing read.

I do most of my writing in a simple text editor. I find that key response is much faster and having a copy in .txt let's me do anything I want with it later.

Harumph. Captain Xark, I worked at Adobe for 14 years, part of the InDesign team for 7. The thing is, many publishers want documents submitted as Word or other text files that get formatted in InDesign or in-house. So Word remains a player in the publishing workflow. My hunch is that Jason is trying to print this document out himself, or is getting ready to send it to someone. In either case he needs the lines gone, now. (I might be wrong 1,000 times over, I just don't like being told I'm not correct, out of hand. ;)

Are they printing? I mean are the dots really there or are you just in some mode that is viewing formatting like paragraphs, etc?

Do yo umean Office 07 on Windows Vista? I program Microsoft Office, but am not familiar with the latest Word version. Im still getting used to Excel 07 on one of my machines.

Jason, sounds like you're getting some good advice here. That's good, cuz I don't have a clue! Just wanted to let you know I hope you've figured it out.

Hi Guys:
Thanks to Elliot I found the solution to the problem. If any of you using awful Window'sVista should have this problem, here is the solution
In Word 2007:

1. Press CTRL/A to select the entire document.
2. Click the Page Layout tab on the Ribbon.
3. Click the Page Borders icon.
4. Click the Borders tab (the first one).
5. Click the None setting.
6. Click OK

Thanks and Shout out to all those who helped me. This is what a real online community feels like. I was not alone in this awful formatting mess. Weeks of frustation came to an end. Thanks again

Jason, good for you, finding the solution to your own problem! When you get to the point you'd prefer to spend your time working on your work instead of wasting it searching for ways to fix broken Microsoft software products, here's some advice you'll find helpful and valuable too:

Get a Mac.
Comes bundled with software called iWork that has everything you need to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations that will kick ass on anything made with Microsucks software.

And best of all, Donna, Pages will export a finished document into Word format so the majority of idiotic corporate America is not forced to its knees, even though it rightly should be.