Why all these dots instead of the spaces that were there & ¶ marks when I Reply to or Forward an email in my new Outlook in Office 2019 Pro+?

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I can't imagine why I or anyone would even need them.

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A causal user won't need them often but they can be helpful. A few people use them all the time. :(

Most people use them when something in the layout doesn't look right. The non-printing characters, especially the pilcrow symbol and boxes in the corner of table cells, help you to see the elements you're using. The dots for spaces can show you why tabs aren't lining up (usually because there are spaces instead of tabs or spaces following tabs.)

I last used it when a client used tables for customer information and made a mess when he added new customers in the middle. Showing the non-printable characters allowed me to quickly see he had a bunch of separate tables. I also learned he had a habit of using spaces to line up his text, instead of using tabs and line breaks. :( Fixed the tables and the tabs and he thought I was a savant. LOL I told him how to add new entries to the table (tab in the last used cell) but I expect he'll ask me to fix it again next year.

Thanks Diane. That made all of those formatting things go away and I'd not noticed yet, but apparently, they would have also been in other Microsoft docs like Word docs. Now it says that they won't. I can't imagine why I or anyone would even need them. I must be a dumb "normal, simple" User. ;-)
It does mean that telling people to have the cursor in the email's text body is needed for this to be done.
Doing it once seemed to save my decision, since I then Forwarded another email and it too opened up not showing those silly formatting symbols.

So that means that editing the Registry isn't needed at all. Nice simple fix.

There is a registry edit (the settings in Options is stored in the registry) but I don't know the key offhand. I can look it up if needed.

Thanks for all the great extra info! I haven't been on my PC yet to try it, but will it stay with them turned off or if they won't, is there any way to do that, even with a registry edit it there's no easier way?

>>> Is there any way to Pin Outlook to Run As Administrator to the Start Menu

You need to make a shortcut to outlook.exe then set the shortcut to run as admin. But, you shouldnt use run as admin routinely. Use it only to troubleshoot.

When I need to run as admin, I hold shift and right click on the icon pinned on my taskbar.

All of the non-prinatabl;e characters will go away when you turn off the formatting marks.

You need the cursor in the body part of the message form to enable the formatting options. Start typing a message then see if the options are enabled.

Or try this: click New Email, then in the compose message format, click file > options > mail > editor options and uncheck Show all formatting marks.