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. Jay Freedman 208.3K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2013-01-18T16:19:44+00:00

    Sorry, there is no option to turn it off. The only option that affects it is on the Advanced page, at the bottom of the "Show document content" section, to expand all headings when opening a document. That won't prevent the headings from collapsing during a session.

    I think the only thing you can do is to get into the habit of moving the cursor further to the left in the margin than you first think is necessary, before clicking to select the heading.

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  2. 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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  3. Anonymous
    2013-06-04T15:41:58+00:00

    The expand/collapse arrows are governed by the "outline level" selected in the paragraph settings dialog.  

    By default, if you are using the standard "Heading [#]" style settings for your headings, the outline level will be set depending on the heading style chosen.  If you want to remove the arrows, you will have to use the "body text" outline level for your heading styles.  You can access the "outline level" setting in the paragraph dialog.  Note you may need to create a new heading style since Word does not allow you to change the "outline level" of their default heading styles.

    I'm not too familiar with what Word does with the "outline level", but this may cause problems if you are using the automatic table of contents tool.

    Jason

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