Turn off paragraph collapse/expand arrows in word 2013

Anonymous
2013-01-18T15:27:33+00:00

Hi -

I'm not sure what it is called in Word 2013, but an arrow appears before a paragraph heading that allows you to collapse all text following the paragraph until it comes to another paragraph heading. Yeah - how do you turn this annoying feature off? I have clicked that arrow so many times when I just wanted to select text. I may be missing the item in the Options dialog box, can't seem to find it.

Thanks so much!

Tammy

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Jay Freedman 208.3K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2017-02-12T22:59:53+00:00

Thank you! I don't use group policy very much, and I wasn't aware that there were such settings there.

For other readers, if you don't have the group policy administrative templates or OCT for your version of Office, you can download the appropriate file here:

Office 2013 Administrative Templates and OCT

Office 2016 Administrative Templates and OCT

After the templates are installed, run the group policy editor (gpedit.exe*) with administrator rights. In the left panel, drill down to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Microsoft Word 2013 (or 2016) > Word Options > Advanced. The two zoom level settings are about halfway down the list on the right side.

*The Home edition of Windows doesn't include the group policy editor. If that's the edition you have, then see https://www.itechtics.com/enable-gpedit-windows-10-home/.

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Anonymous
2017-02-12T16:44:30+00:00

All of the responses that are focused on removing the heading functionality are great unless you need headings to automatically number paragraphs or create a table of contents, etc.

If you really need the Expand/Collapse markers to go away, from group policy or the Office Customization Tool (OCT), set the Set the minimum zoom level for expand/collapse on-object UI to 110 and Set the maximum zoom level for expand/collapse on-object UI to 90. The little markers to the left of the heading go away. If you right-click, you can still collapse the heading. Right-click again and Expand heading is grayed out but Expand all headingsis still available.

For information on changing settings in group policy, go here:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179176.aspx

Hope this helps!

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-10-25T16:36:12+00:00

    Despair not! No need to mess around with "group policy" (whazzat?) or enter weird numbers into the OCT. There's a MUCH easier way to get rid of those extremely annoying triangles and their "expand/collapse" function. (They may appear when you upload a document that used them but online advice that I could find gives no simple way to get rid of them.)

    First select the line or text that brings up the triangle. *You can also "select all" the entire document text to do all such triangles at one go!*Then go to the "Paragraph" box on the Home tab, click on the little arrow at the bottom right of that box to get the full menu, and look for the drop-down box that says "Outline level". Click on "Body text" (the first option). This strips out all the header formatting and the little triangles in text you've highlighted all disappear.

    Note: Basic formatting like bold or italic text will remain, but header font sizes will all go to the body text size. This advice is therefore for people who are driven nuts by the triangles and don't care about reformatting the headers as long as they still stand out somehow.

    This worked for me in Office 10 anyway. Good luck.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-06-21T17:52:15+00:00

    Thanks for your response, Jason! I do understand the purpose of the arrow, and I do use headings to create things like table of contents, so the body text heading will not work for me.

    It's a nice feature, especially if you are creating large documents and would like to collapse and expand to work on "pieces" of the doc and keep other pieces hidden. But, it really should be a user choice. I make a point of mentioning it in all of my training sessions - it has already confused some of my users who have received documents from others - and, my advice is to change the paragraphs to body text, if possible, to avoid the arrows.

    Thanks, again, for taking the time to respond.

    Tammy

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-01-18T16:27:22+00:00

    Hi Jay,

    I was afraid that was going to be the answer when I couldn't find an option to turn it off. I have gotten used to selecting from the selection area of the window...I can see my users having many problems with this when we switch over to 2013, though.

    There are definitely a few questionable design changes Microsoft has made in Office 2013 - I think change is good, but, for things like this, the user should be able to make the choice whether to use.

    Thanks so much for taking the time to respond to my post.

    Tammy

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