Word spaces not showing

We ran into a strange problem today, and thought we’d share the solution.

The Problem

When you enter a space, a line return, or other paragraph mark, nothing happens until you enter the next character. For instance, you type «This is not working.», then <space>, but the cursor is still right next to your period.

However, as soon as you type «B» for «But», the space you had already typed appears.

At first this may not seem like a big deal, but it can get very frustrating, very quickly.

The Cause

It turns out there is a fairly simple cause for this: You have a Section Break at the point in your document where you’re seeing this behaviour. You can verify this by hitting ctrl+* (ctrl+shift+8) to show Formatting Marks.

We’re not sure why this is the behaviour that Word exhibits under this circumstance, but there it is.

The Solution

Once you know the cause, the solution is pretty easy. Just put a few additional blank lines in front of your Section Break to make sure you’re not typing right up against it. Voilà! Problem solved.

It turns out there is a fairly simple cause for this: You have a Section Break at the point in your document where you’re seeing this behaviour. You can verify this by hitting ctrl+* (ctrl+shift+8) to show Formatting Marks.

How do I fix missing space in Word?

Workaround 1: Before saving that Word document you can do a “replace all” to replace all single spaces with double spaces. After opening the document in the other Word program repeat the replace all changing all double spaces with single spaces.

How do I show the cursor in Word?

Hidden Pointer To determine if this is the issue, click the “Start” menu, select “Control Panel” and click to open the “Mouse” option. Select the “Pointer Options” tab and check for the “Hide pointer while typing” option in the Visibility section. Click the box to de-select it if it’s selected.

How do I get my cursor back when it disappears?

Depending on your keyboard and mouse model, the Windows keys you should hit are varying from one to another. Thus you may try the following combinations to make your disappearing cursor back to visible in Windows 10: Fn + F3/ Fn + F5/ Fn + F9/ Fn + F11.

Why does my cursor hang?

According to users, problems with your cursor can occur due to multiple mouse drivers on your PC. If your cursor freezes, jumps or disappears, you might have to disable additional mouse drivers on your PC. To do that, follow these steps: Open Device Manager and navigate to Mice and other pointing devices section.

Why does my typing disappear?

This is called “overtype mode” and is generally very frustrating for most users. Simply press the “Insert” key on your keyboard to turn it off. If you accidentally push this key in the future, it will turn it back on (unfortunately it does not give you any warning).

Where is the Insert button?

Sometimes displayed as Ins, the Insert key is a key on most computer keyboards near or next to the backspace key.

How do I stop overwriting?

To stop overwriting the next character whenever you type a letter, press the “Insert” key on your keyboard. The Insert key is located to the left of the Home key on most keyboards. You are not warned in any way when you enable or disable the overtype mode.

Is it override or overwrite?

5 Answers. If you’re replacing one implementation completely with another, it’s “overwriting” or more commonly “replacing”. If you’re replacing an implementation with another for some specific cases, it’s “overriding”. To “overwrite” something is to put something else in its place, destroying the thing overwritten.

How many times overwrite hard drive?

Conclusion: Only 1 Overwriting Pass is Needed to Erase HDDs Multiple overwriting passes for hard disk drives is not an absolute necessity anymore. So, how many times should you overwrite a hard disk for complete data erasure? The answer: One pass is enough.

What does it mean to overwrite a file?

In computer data storage, overwriting is the process of replacing old information with new information. Overwriting generally occurs when unused file system clusters are written upon with new data, though overwriting is also used in security algorithms.

Can you recover an overwritten file?

As the hard drive will hold your backups, you should be able to recover overwritten files from it — so long as you’ve remembered to backup recently and your hard drive is in working condition. For example, a free file recovery tool like Recuva is very limited, but easy to use.

Show or Hide White Space in Microsoft Word Documents

by Avantix Learning Team | Updated February 9, 2022

Applies to: Microsoft^® Word^® 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019 or 365 (Windows)

You can show or hide white space at the top and bottom of pages in Microsoft Word documents. If you hide white space, you won’t be able to see headers, footers or top and bottom margins in Print Layout View. The gray space that typically appears at the top and bottom of pages as you scroll through your document will also disappear. If you want to show or hide spaces between words, you’ll need to click Show/Hide ¶ on the Home tab in the Ribbon.

Print Layout View is the default view in Word. You can click the View tab in the Ribbon and select Print Layout in the Views group to go to this view if necessary.

In Word documents, margins are set for the top and bottom of pages by default and can be changed on the Layout tab in the Ribbon. Headers and footers appear in the top and bottom margin areas (with the exception of floating objects) so if white space is hidden, headers and footers may seem to be missing.

Recommended article: How to Hide Comments in Word (or Display Them)

Do you want to learn more about Microsoft Word? Check out our virtual classroom or live classroom Word courses >

Showing or hiding white space using a shortcut

To show or hide white space in Word using a shortcut:

1. Position the cursor at the top of the document (you can press Ctrl + Home to move the cursor to the top of the document).
2. Move the pointer into the gray area just above the first page (below the Ruler) until the pointer turns into an up and down arrow. A message appears to Double-click to show white space or Double-click to hide white space.
3. Double-click. If you are hiding white space, you can also position the pointer in the gray area between pages and then double-click.

If you show or hide white space, this setting will continue in any new documents you create. When white space is hidden, the setting affects not just the white space between pages but anything that is part of the header or footer (including watermarks and other graphics anchored to the header or footer). When you save and close a document, the setting is retained in the document.

If you hide white space, page breaks are still visible in the document. If you print the document, the headers and footers will print even if white space is hidden.

Showing or hiding white space using the Options dialog box

To show or hide white space using the Word Options dialog box:

1. Open a Word document where you want to show or hide white space.
2. Click the File tab in the Ribbon.
3. Select Options. A dialog box appears.
4. In the categories on the left, select Display.
5. In the pane on the right, check or uncheck Show whitespace between pages in Print Layout view.
6. Click OK.

The Options dialog box, with the Display category selected, appears as follows:

Because this feature isn’t obvious, it can cause problems for users if areas in their document seem to be missing (such as headers or footers).

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More resources

14+ Word Selection Shortcuts to Quickly Select Text

How to Remove Hard Returns in Word Documents

How to Superscipt or Subscript in Word (with Shortcuts)

How to Insert the Not Equal Sign in Word (5 Ways to Type or Insert ≠)

How to Insert or Type the Degree Symbol in Word (5 Ways to Insert °)

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Have you ever worked on a document that included multiple fonts and the printout didn’t quite match what you wanted? Sometimes there was more space between words or sentences than what seemed right, and you didn’t quite know what the problem was?

I have found that the culprit is often my own fault. I may have placed extra spaces between words or sentences in such a manner that the text looks fine on screen, but doesn’t quite fit the bill when finally printed. The solution, of course, is to remove the extra spaces and make sure there are a consistent number of them between both words and sentences. The problem with the solution is that it is often difficult to see how many spaces there really are.

Fortunately, Word allows you to easily see where spaces occur in your documents. All you need to do is follow these steps:

1. Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options. In Word 2010 and later versions display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
2. Click Display at the left side of the dialog box. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Display options of the Word Options dialog box.

3. Make sure the Spaces check box is selected.
4. Click on OK.

Now, all your spaces appear as small visible dots. It is very easy to tell where two visible dots appear, as opposed to two invisible spaces. Delete any extra spaces you want, as you would delete any other characters, and you will have your document cleaned up in no time.

Author Bio

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen…