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+?

Thanks for all your help. I'm a little tempted to try that regedit but as you said, I should probably ask Microsoft Support for help.

Wish me luck. I need some. 😋

Jeff

I am sorry. But I feel you would be best served by direct support from Microsoft.

Because:

1. I can't reproduce the problem in my environment, so I can't test for possible causes or confidently provide the steps for a fix. i.e. I'm working blind.
2. The Reddit article is the only thing I have found with a confirmed solution and that involved working directly with Microsoft Support to uninstall Office, remove the current profile (including the registry entries) and rebuilding everything from scratch.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Office365/comments/tranah/outlook_paragraph_symbol_keeps_coming_back/

I was able to resolve the issue with the help of Microsoft support. The step that seemed to be needed to start over from scratch with this particular Outlook settings was: Go into regedit and browse to: HKEY_Current_User\SOFTWARE\Microsoft and then rename Office folder to Office.old Upon reinstalling office after that, it then defaulted back to default fonts etc, and also got rid of the issue with the "Show all formatting marks" check box getting checked again when replying to emails.

This is not something I feel comfortable recommending you try on your own, nor do I feel confident in my ability to help you out if something goes sideways.

Bummer. Guess I'll need to call the Microsoft Support. I did a Quick Repair and that didn't fix it. Then I did an Online Full Repair, still no luck. Then I even uninstalled and reinstalled the whole Office 2019 suite, and that didn't change anything. Is it possible that I'm dreaming, and that what I'm trying to accomplish isn't possible? It seems like it should stay set after I uncheck everything, either with an email open or not (tried both many times), but it doesn't. The next email I create has a ¶ in the body when I type anything down there. Same thing happens if I Reply to an email.
That uninstalling thing was a horror since Microsoft is slimily trying to force everyone to convert to Microsoft 365 by forcing it on me when I clicked on Office 2019 install link. It took a lot of work to figure out how to get rid of 365 and get back to my Outlook Classis 2019 and the to get Word and Excel that word standalone instead of 365 online subscription junk, which I refuse to pay for.
It oddly updated the date on the image I'm showing here, as if I only added it today. I re-installed it today.
So, I guess it's either contact that help site you gave me or give up and just learn to deal with this aggravation.

Sorry about a 2nd Reply but I just made sense of what you said with that Reddit link. It had overwhelmed me earlier. I'll read it.

I'm lost. Please don't give up on me. I'm apparently not saying things the right way. All you had to do was say "Yes, that is what I think the best process is. I did already know all those things that you said again.".

I'll take that to be what you meant and I'll do those steps. I'm still lost on what this is supposed to accomplish. You ended by just saying "When you start Outlook again, it should return to your previous profile."

What then? What do I do or am I supposed to know?

Please excuse my ignorance.