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
    2018-01-12T09:35:30+00:00

    It could just be that the style needs changing.  If you select the text and (re)apply Normal or No Space style, it'll get rid of the annoying arrows.  No need to go into Group Policy or OCT settings (or if you're like me, despair at having to look up WTH they even are).

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-10-28T15:25:42+00:00

    In a structured document, you really should be using styles. In particular, you need heading styles. Not using styles is an option only in very short documents.

    Styles are indeed wonderful for some purposes - I find them most useful for formatting footnotes. When I posted a long document on the web, collapsing headers was also very useful. But when the document is all basic text broken up only with simple subheads and collapsing is not needed (as it isn't when providing college students with document to download that deliberately looks like an article, for example, which is my main purposes in formatting long documents these days) or is actively in the way (as when sharing articles with editors who don't use that function for reviewing and editing manuscripts), it's not up to Word to dictate to us how to use styles.

    Indeed, if I may, inserting by default a new function like collapsing headers and then making us delete it (if we can figure out how) is just more demonstration of the unfortunate mindset of software designers who presume  they know best what all users are doing and needing in all settings You don't know all our needs or what "options" suit everyone best and you're hardly in a position to say what all of us "should" do. That's up to us to decide. In any case, our suddenly finding obscure symbols appearing and disappearing with no explanation in our optical work space in documents we're used to using and proofing in particular ways is only irritating.

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-10-25T17:25:57+00:00

    Virginia, 

    Although this will indeed get rid of the triangles, it removes the functionality that you get with the Outline Level (i.e., styles, numbering, headings in the Navigation pane, etc.). The Outline Levels are there in a document for lots of reasons that would not justify getting rid of them and would, no doubt, frustrate the person who put them there. The ends does not justify the means!

    Annette

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