Word Duplicate-Paragraph Bug

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3

Occasionally I encounter a strange bug in Microsoft Word 2010. Consider the following document part:

enter image description here

This box contains six paragraphs:

  1. Header "Lemma"
  2. Line with word "Let"
  3. Equation
  4. Line with text "be the gravitational field. Then"
  5. Equation
  6. Line with text "for any closed surface S enclosing the origin."

However, for some reason, the fourth line is rendered twice. If I edit the fourth line, the 'ghost line' is updated simultaneously. And, as you can see, if I select a part of the fourth line, the selection is also drawn on the 'ghost line'.

Is there any way of removing the ghost line?

Andreas Rejbrand

Posted 2011-06-30T19:58:41.760

Reputation: 756

Mmmm astrophysics.. Yummy. This sort of sounds like the kind of bug you can get around just by screwing around with formatting, a lot.. – James T Snell – 2011-06-30T20:13:20.097

5Does this show up when you print preview the document? Also, you might like LaTeX for this sort of thing in the future ;) – Breakthrough – 2011-07-04T19:14:30.867

Happens in Word 2011 very often. – Vervious – 2011-07-04T19:19:48.330

1Not a fix for the bug, but I'm confident that you would accept "LaTeX" as a solution and never look back if you were to give it a try :-) – Kerrek SB – 2011-07-04T19:32:31.860

@Breakthrough, @Kerrek: Well, to be honest, I have never in my life been as upset on a computer program as I was with Word 2007 and is with Word 2010. This problem is what I would classify as a 'minor Word annoyance'. What really makes me upset is the auto-destruct feature of Word 2007 (and 2010) documents.

– Andreas Rejbrand – 2011-07-04T19:36:55.037

And, well, I know it's incredibly stupid of me to write long, technical, articles in Microsoft Word, but I am an incredibly stubborn and eccentric person. And thanks to @Nicu for the bounty! – Andreas Rejbrand – 2011-07-04T19:39:00.903

By the way, I installed SP1 for Office 2010 that was released a couple of days ago, but that didn't solve it... – Andreas Rejbrand – 2011-07-04T19:40:35.227

@Breakthrough: It does, yes: http://privat.rejbrand.se/wrdprintpreview.png

– Andreas Rejbrand – 2011-07-04T20:08:42.983

Have you tried: 1. saving document in another format (like DOC or RTF instead of DOCX)? 2. opening that file in OpenOffice/LibreOffice to see if the "ghost line" appears? if it opens correctly, use that software to continue your work. 3. seeing in another layout ("normal" or "web" instead of "printer layout")? 4. searching/asking in their forum (http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/office2010/threads)?

– kokbira – 2011-07-04T20:48:48.800

@kokbira: (1) That is not an option, because I use the Word 2007 equation feature (etremely) extensively, and IIRC such equations are converted to (raster?!) images if you abandon the DOCX format. (2) In addition, I use almost every advanced Word feature there is (footnotes, endnotes, TOC, cross references, fields, advanced page breaks, header/footers, a lot of Word vector illustrations, bibliography, citation index, etc.), and so OpenOffice/LibreOffice has no chance reading everything properly. (3) In fact, the issue is restricted to "printer layout", but since the 'ghost line' is present... – Andreas Rejbrand – 2011-07-05T10:40:05.210

...I export the document as a PDF (which 'kind of' is the entire meaning of the document), it doesn't really help me. (4) Perhaps I do that. – Andreas Rejbrand – 2011-07-05T10:40:48.300

What is the wrong if any human's work is not always complete? – FindOutIslamNow – 2011-07-06T15:18:48.603

I had the same problem in Word 2010. I was working with equations inside columns. When I forced a column break it put an extra paragraph mark at the beginning of the second column. Deleting that paragraph mark made the same duplication of lines as described. None of the fixes listed so far have worked for me. I got around it by making the extra paragraph in a font size 1, but it is a frustrating bug. – HaveSpacesuit – 2013-09-28T00:28:02.137

Answers

1

The issue is resoved (in my case) by removing the 'Keep lines together' option in the paragraph settings.

The Paragraph Settings Dialog

But, clearly, this is a bug (one of many in Word 2007 and 2010...). Now, it isn't terribly important for me to have this paragraph setting on in this style, so I can live without it in this case.

If you want to experiment yourself with this issue, have a look at

The following additional details seem to work for Word 2007.

The 'Keep lines together' option must be unchecked for all lines containing equations. Other lines with text may have the 'Keep lines together' option checked without causing paragraph duplication.

Another indicator of the problem is misplaced equation highlighting as the mouse is moved around and near the lines containing equations.

Andreas Rejbrand

Posted 2011-06-30T19:58:41.760

Reputation: 756

It would be interesting to get a confirmation that the problem isn't only seen on my system. Anyone? – Andreas Rejbrand – 2011-07-09T23:47:16.517

Something Einstein said about insanity comes to mind. If you want different results, you have to stop doing the same thing. – David Schwartz – 2011-09-23T13:23:53.480

@Gareth: Thank you for observing that the image link was missing. I always upload my images to my private site privat.rejbrand.se, and I guarantee that I will never remove a file from that site, once uploaded there. However, as you noticed, my web hosting provider experienced technical difficulties the other day, so my entire collection of web sites (such as the main site rejbrand.se) went offline for a day or two. – Andreas Rejbrand – 2011-10-19T17:59:14.043

Thanks @Andreas - note that I am doing a site-wide reupload of images and wasn't targeting your images in particular. See here: http://meta.superuser.com/questions/3558/reuploading-non-broken-images-from-imgur-to-stack-imgur

– Gaff – 2011-10-20T02:00:37.120

1

I fixed this by deleting the endline before the first instance. This caused my the previous line and the first instance to append, and the second instance to disappear completely.

rblackle

Posted 2011-06-30T19:58:41.760

Reputation: 11

0

It usually happens to me when I'm translating texts. I usually use a table: I put the original text in the left column and translate into the right column, and that's where I would someimes get a ghost line similar to the one mentioned in the question. The way I fix it is by copying all the text into a new word file. Even though it marks the ghost line along with the regular text when I copy it, the ghost line disappears when I paste it into the new file.

Just a guest

Posted 2011-06-30T19:58:41.760

Reputation: 1

Asked: 2011-06-30T19:58:41.760

Viewed: 9 285 times

Active: 2018-03-24T15:26:08.457