Word TAB INDICATOR missing

Anonymous
2014-05-14T08:16:58+00:00

The TAB INDICATOR now shows only as a blank icon and no tabs show on the ruler. My tab indicator and tabs were fine until recently. Running Word 2013 on Win 8. How can I fix this, please?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Jay Freedman 208.3K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2014-08-21T21:24:31+00:00

The fix for this bug has been released as KB2883058 as part of the August 2014 updates. If you have Office 365, the fix will be included in the August automatic updates; otherwise it will appear in the August Patch Tuesday downloads in Windows Update or can be obtained from the link above.

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Answer accepted by question author
Stefan Blom 353.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
2014-07-27T16:27:39+00:00

There is an issue causing tab stops and indent indicators to disappear from the ruler in Word 2013. The problem is being investigated by the Office team, and a fix is expected. Meanwhile, the following are workarounds recommended by Microsoft:

  • Start Word first, with a blank document, and then open the document you are going to read or edit.​
  • Avoid having a table as the first item in a document (at present it appears that this is the cause of the problem).

While other procedures may clear the problem temporarily, none is a permanent fix, and they do not address the underlying problem issue.

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-06-14T12:24:40+00:00

    I started having the problem a couple or three weeks ago. I have found that opening Options and closing it again brings back the markers. I don't know right now if I clicked on the OK button or the Cancel button.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-06-14T15:02:46+00:00

    This started happening very recently. I can open a new document and everything works okay. When I open a document that starts with a table, the markers are gone. Everything used to work okay and then something changed recently in MS WORD.

    I have tried repairing as others tell me to do and that does not solve the problem. Everyone can see, from all the different posts regarding this problem, that there doesn't appear to be one specific rationale reason that causes this new problem.

    There are also other posts that describe this problem and suggest changing the display theme to Windows 7 in the Control Panel under Personalization. Changing the theme does seem to be a workaround. However, that doesn't resolve the problem and that doesn't allow us to use customized themes.

    ArZi(2) shows an excellent screen shot of exactly what is happening.

    Also, if I open my document that doesn't show the tab markers etc., then go to File/Options, and just click Okay in the bottom right corner, all the tab markers start showing up immediately after the Option screen closes. That should help MS track down the problem. 

    All this points to a problem with the MS Word software. I ask the moderator of this forum, or someone that can submit a ticket, to please submit a ticket to MS to resolve this issue because it is definitely caused by some recent change to MS Word.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-06-16T14:28:01+00:00

    I have that exact same problem since a couple of weeks on hundreds of computers with Word 2013.

    • Only if I open a document that STARTwith a table. 
    • If I open file/options and click OK (without changing anything), everything reapear...
    • If I change desktop wallpaper, everything reapear...  (Seems that Word need a display refresh or something)
    • If I uninstall KB2880455 AND KB2881005, it seems to correct that problem...

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