Ask a new question

Question mark in a box in word 2007

I'm confused! Some time during creating a large word document (150+ pages) a question mark inside a box appeared in the index. When I remove the marking for the index entry, the symbol disappears. What is this and how do I get rid of it?

The box with a question mark indicates corrupt formatting or a missing character.

Try changing the Font used in the document and check if issue persists. To do that do the following.

Save a local copy of the document on the desktop. Highlight the contents of the document using Ctrl +A, and change the Font to Arial and check if the issue occurs.

37 people found this reply helpful

·

Was this reply helpful?

Sorry this didn't help.

Great! Thanks for your feedback.

How satisfied are you with this reply?

Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.

How satisfied are you with this reply?

Thanks for your feedback.

Changing the font to Arial only changes how the weird character looks; in my case it changes from a question mark in a box (as a calibri font) to a "box" with no top or bottom (as an arial font), but it still shouldn't be there. Deleting the paragraph with the marked entry makes the weird character disappear, but retyping it in makes it appear again. I'm starting to wonder if this is a Word bug.

5 people found this reply helpful

·

Was this reply helpful?

Sorry this didn't help.

Great! Thanks for your feedback.

How satisfied are you with this reply?

Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.

How satisfied are you with this reply?

Thanks for your feedback.

I'm wondering if what you're seeing is just the paragraph marks. Inserting an index entry (XE field) causes Word to display Hidden text (since XE fields are formatted as Hidden); along with this, it also displays other nonprinting characters (formatting marks), such as paragraph marks, dots for spaces, arrows for tab characters, etc. See http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NonPrintChars.htm.
Microsoft MVP (Word) since 1999
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://ssbarnhill.com
http://wordfaqs.ssbarnhill.com
Screen shots captured with TechSmith's Snagit

Was this reply helpful?

Sorry this didn't help.

Great! Thanks for your feedback.

How satisfied are you with this reply?

Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.

How satisfied are you with this reply?

Thanks for your feedback.

I'm well aware of the paragraph and other hidden formatting symbols and how to show or hide them. That's not the problem. It looks to me like yet another bug in Word. After I expanded my manuscript in other areas, not related to this problem area, the weird question mark in a box symbol disappeared. Wow, isn't that great? No, because it goes unexplained and is not reproduceable!

Another issue that I ran into is marking an entry within a bold section of text, when I un-bold the text within the XE field; sometimes such a marked entry shows up in the index as bold, and most of the time as not-bold. It's consistently inconsistent! The only solution that seems to work is to move the XE field to the next line. @#$(%)(#^% Can't they write a piece of software that WORKS? I mean, Word has been around for decades.

Was this reply helpful?

Sorry this didn't help.

Great! Thanks for your feedback.

How satisfied are you with this reply?

Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.

How satisfied are you with this reply?

Thanks for your feedback.

If the bold formatting is part of the style definition rather than direct font formatting, then leave it alone, as Word will see it as Default Paragraph Font. By removing the bold, you're actually toggling the Bold flag, which results in bold in the index.
Microsoft MVP (Word) since 1999
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://ssbarnhill.com
http://wordfaqs.ssbarnhill.com
Screen shots captured with TechSmith's Snagit

Was this reply helpful?

Sorry this didn't help.

Great! Thanks for your feedback.

How satisfied are you with this reply?

Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.

How satisfied are you with this reply?

Thanks for your feedback.

Suzanne,

 

The bold formatting was defined in the Heading used for the problem text. However the related entries in the index were inconsistent: about half of them appeared in bold, the others appeared not bold.

Was this reply helpful?

Sorry this didn't help.

Great! Thanks for your feedback.

How satisfied are you with this reply?

Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.

How satisfied are you with this reply?

Thanks for your feedback.

I think you are facing the problem with this symbol �... m facing it too, i would like to remove it from my document...

i work on .docx files that have content copied from webpages.. the docx file contains approx 150- 170 pages...

i was wondering wether there is a way to remove these symbols by using find and replace.... please help...

22 people found this reply helpful

·

Was this reply helpful?

Sorry this didn't help.

Great! Thanks for your feedback.

How satisfied are you with this reply?

Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.

How satisfied are you with this reply?

Thanks for your feedback.

i also figured there a bug in ms word or whatever it may be... 

whenever i try to find a non breaking space separated by a manual line break with highlighted formatting , it does not return accurate results... i have to edit them manually. if you would like a sample of the docx file , i can provide you with it . please help... 

Was this reply helpful?

Sorry this didn't help.

Great! Thanks for your feedback.

How satisfied are you with this reply?

Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.

How satisfied are you with this reply?

Thanks for your feedback.

 
 

Question Info

Last updated March 5, 2025 Views 33,345 Applies to: