How to Remove Unwanted Lines in Word 2007, 2010, and 2013

For some reasons, unwanted lines occasionally appear in Microsoft Word and it is very difficult to delete. You cannot click on it, you cannot delete it and even when you select all and press delete, it will back again and your every effort will become useless. These lines can be Gridlines, Drawinglines, Footnotes, Vertical lines, Horizontal lines, Borders or else. It can be also occur when you copy and paste texts from unsupported file type or online. Here I will explain that how you can remove these unexpected or unwanted lines from Microsoft Word 2007, 2010 and 2013.

Remove unwanted Borders from Word Document: The most upsetting lines in Word documents appear to be paragraph and page borders. These paragraphs borders can appear if the “automatic border” option is enabled in AutoCorrect. You can easily remove this by selecting these lines and pressing the Delete key but sometimes it does not work.
To remove the paragraph borders, just place the cursor in the paragraph above the border and follow these steps:

For Word 2007 and 2010:

• Go on Home tab.
• In the Paragraph group, the bottom right button is for borders.
• Click the arrow beside to Border and select no Border from the Borders menu.

For Word 2013:

• Go on the Home tab.
• In the Paragraph group, click beside the Borders button
• Select No Border from Borders menu.

You can also disable this feature so that Word would not automatically create paragraph borders in the future.
For Word 2007:

• Go on Office Button.
• Select Word Options.
• In Proofing section, choose AutoCorrect Options.
• Now go to AutoFormat as You Type and now clear the check box for “Border lines” under “Apply as you type.

For Word 2010 and 2013:
Go to File > Options > Proofing > AutoCorrect Options > AutoFormat as You Type and now clear the check box for “Border lines” under “Apply as you type.”

It is very confusing between page borders and paragraph borders. If an unwanted line appears in the header or footer area and you can not select it at all, then most likely it is Page border.

To remove Page border from your Word document follow these steps:
For Word 2007 and 2010:

• Go on the Page Layout tab.
• Click on Page Borders in Page Background group.
• In the Page Borders dialog, click on the preset picture for None.
• Now click on OK.

For Word 2013:
On the Design tab, in the Page Background group, click Page Borders. In the Page Borders dialog, click on the preset picture for None, then OK.

Remove Drawinglines from Word Document:
Usually Drawinglines can be easily selected and deleted without any issue. In some cases, these lines won’t be deleted because the text wrapping style has been set to Behind Text. In this scenario, you can select these lines with Select Objects tool.

Follow these steps to select Drawinglines with Select Objects tool:
For Word 2007, 20010 and 2013:
On the Home tab, in the Editing group (extreme right), click on arrow beside Select and choose Select Objects.

How to Remove Gridlines from Word Documents?
There are two kinds of gridlines in Word, Table Gridlines and Drawing Grid. Table gridlines show the boundaries of a table on the screen if a table does not have borders. Gridlines are never visible when you view a document in a web browser. The drawing grid is one of the most perplexing problems for some Word users because it makes the document background look like a graph paper.

Follow these steps to turn on or off the Table Gridlines:
For 2007, 2010 and 2013:
With the insertion point in a table, so that the contextual Table Tools tabs are displayed, select the Layout tab. In the Table group (far left), click View Gridlines to toggle the display (the button wording does not change, but its appearance does).

Follow these steps to turn on or off the Drawing grid:
For Word 2007, 2010 and 2013:
On the View tab, in the Show/Hide group, check or clear the box for “Gridlines.” The fact that this setting is available even when the insertion point is not in a table, may explain why the drawing grid is so often enabled in error.

How to Remove Footnote and Endnote separators?
Microsoft Word always places footnotes or Endnote separators in each document. These Footnotes are used for detail comments in printed documents. While working in Word document, many users wondering why a separator may remains on a document when notes have been deleted. To get rid of these notes you have to remove the note by deleting the note reference mark.

Follow these steps to remove Footnote and Endnote separators:
For 2007, 2010 and 2013:

• Use keyboard shortcut key Ctrl + H to open Replace dialog box.
• In the open box, type ^e (for endnote reference mark) or ^f (for footnote reference mark).
• Now click Find Next until you find the reference mark.
• Now click on Replace.

How to Remove Horizontal lines from Word Document?
Horizontal lines are very helpful to divide paragraphs clearly but sometimes we get the unusual horizontal lines automatically in our Word document and we just want to delete it. First try to delete these lines by selecting it and pressing delete key. In a case you are unable to delete in this way then follow these steps to delete horizontal lines:

For Word 2007 and 2010:

• Open Borders or Page dialog box.
• Now click on button Horizontal Line.
• In the open dialog box, select the particular line that you want to delete.
• Now click on Delete.

For Word 2013:

• Go on Home tab
• Click on Borders dropdown in Paragraph group.
• In the open dropdown list, select Horizontal Line.
• Now select the particular line that you want to delete and press Delete key.