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
    2018-01-12T19:01:55+00:00

    Hi Eric,

    I appreciate your response, but this was a post from 2013 when the arrows started showing up. There are a lot of pages of responses, you may have missed that I know what levels are and why the arrows are showing up, and I need levels. I just needed to know if the arrows could be turned off...the answer is no.

    Thanks, again, though! It was very kind of you to respond!

    Have a great day,

    Tammy

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-01-12T18:56:24+00:00

    First, select the part of the paper that has the little collapse arrows that you want to remove.

    Then, click on the "Home" tab and click on the little arrow in the lower right-hand corner of the "Paragraph" sub-tab to expand it.

    The collapse arrow is because there are different "levels" in your paper.  If you click the drop-down arrow next to "Outline level" and select basic text, it will remove all of the collapse arrows.

    Hope this helps!

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  3. 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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