Can’t delete part of footer (Word 2000 sp-3)

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Subject edited by HansV to be more descriptive than just ‘Word 2000’

I have a footer in a Word document that shows the right curly bracket and I can’t delete it! I know that is usually part of a field code but even if I delete the page number, the bracket won’t go away. When this happens it always seems to be either older documents or documents that are created by combining several different documents from different authors. Any suggestions?

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What happens if you press Alt+F9 to display field codes? (Press Alt+F9 again when you want to hide field codes).

Could you attach a stripped down copy of a problem document? You can remove the body text, and replace sensitive information in the header and footer with dummy data, as long as the problem is still present.

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When I press alt+F9 nothing happens — it does not toggle from field code to the information

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If nothing changes when you press Alt+F9, the bracket is not (part of) a field. I don’t think we can solve this without seeing such a document.

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I have attached a sample based on the problem document

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It’s some kind of curruption allright. You can get rid of the bracket as follows:
– Activate the footer with the bracket.
– Click before the bracket.
– Press Enter 3 times or more to insert blank paragraphs.
– Press Delete twice to get rid of the bracket.
– Delete superfluous blank paragraphs from the footer.
I don’t know what could have caused this.

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That did it! Thanks Hans and everyone who helps me through these wierd things!!

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Hi

This has happened to me & the below fix works for me.

Please find fix for ‘In the documents header or footer theres a curly bracket or other character that cant be deleted’

Symptom:
In the Word document, in either the header or footer. theres a curly bracket symbol eg }, or some other character that when attempting to delete it cant be removed.

Reason:
The document may have crashed. When Word opens and recovers the document it does its best to clean up the document. However Word hasn’t cleaned up the document properly and left some corruption behind. Also when documents get emailed back into the environment from clients to be worked on again , the documents may contain this symbol.

Solution:
1. Position your cursor at the location the character is located ie either in the header or the footer of the document.
Link this header/or footer to the previous section. As a result this will remove all contents in this header/or footer and remove the offending character.
2. On the toolbar ‘Header and Footer’ > click on the button Same as Previous
3. The following Word warning message is displayed’ Do you want to delete this header/footer and connect to the header/footer in the previous section?’> click Yes
4. The result is the header/or footer is linked to the previous section and the character is removed, and the footer view will display as “Same as Previous’. If the header/or footer is the same you can leave the ‘Same as Previous’.
5. If the orginial header/or footer was different on the toolbar ‘Header and Footer’ > click on the button Same as Previous. The result this will unlink the sections header/or footer. Type the required text.

Note: Check all of the documents sections to confirm that the character has been removed.

cheers Diana

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