Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Printing Non-Printing Characters.
Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated December 2, 2022)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016
Word utilizes a number of different characters that don't show up on a printout of a document. For instance, spaces and tabs leave horizontal space within a document, but there is no indication of their position within a printout.
On-screen is something different. You can see these non-printing characters by simply clicking on the Show/Hide tool on Home tab of the ribbon. For instance, spaces show up as dots and tabs show up as right-pointing arrows. Seeing where the characters are located can be a great help in formatting a document.
But what if you actually want to have these characters printed? What if you want the small dots or right-pointing arrows on your printout? Seeing them printed could be a big help for teachers and others who must judge whether formatting has been done correctly within a document.
Unfortunately, there is no configuration switch or printing mode that allows these non-printing characters to appear on the printout. There are ways around the problem, however. The most obvious answer is to do screen shots of smaller documents. These screen shots would capture the dots, arrows, and other indicators. This will only work, of course, with very short documents. The benefit of this approach is that the printouts can be taken home and graded without the need for a computer at hand.
If you prefer, you can also do a Replace operation to search for all the characters that are non-printing and replace them with their visible on-screen character. This may sound odd, but is quite simple. For instance, you could search for all occurrences of ^p (which is the paragraph marker) and replace them with ^0182^p. The ^0182 code is the backwards P symbol (pilcrow) used at the end of paragraphs. The ^p, of course, is used to actually stop your paragraphs from running together. The ^0182 code will print the desired symbol, but the ^p code will not. You can do similar replace operations for other common non-printing characters; simply look through the symbol tables used by Word to discover the different characters you can use in the operation. You can also codify the steps into a macro that could be run against all the documents, as needed.
There is one caveat to the foregoing approach: Adding the printable characters to the document will make the document itself larger and will affect the horizontal and vertical spacing of the document. This can be an acceptable price to pay, however, if your goal is a hardcopy of those non-printing characters.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (12478) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Printing Non-Printing Characters.
Do More in Less Time! Are you ready to harness the full power of Word 2013 to create professional documents? In this comprehensive guide you'll learn the skills and techniques for efficiently building the documents you need for your professional and your personal life. Check out Word 2013 In Depth today!
If your printer allows you to specify different paper trays as sources for paper, you need to know how to select those ...
Discover MoreYou can have quite a few fonts installed on your system, each of them managed by Windows. If you would like a document ...
Discover MoreEver need to print the mirror image of your document? This tip explains how to reverse your image so it can be used for ...
Discover MoreFREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)
Got a version of Word that uses the ribbon interface (Word 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the menu interface.
Visit the WordTips channel on YouTube
FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
Copyright © 2024 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.
Comments