I want to remove this arrow thing in MS Word

I tried everything like searching about this on the net but to my dismay, I found nothing. Please help.

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8 Answers

All you have to do is Google.

"Expand/Collapse is a feature built-in to all the default heading styles in Word except for No Space and Normal. There is no option to disable the Expand/Collapse feature unless you will be using the Normal style or you will be creating a custom style based on the Normal formatting."

How do you remove all instances of expand/collapse in Word 2016?

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That "arrow" appears because the style for that text is set to either Heading 1, Heading 2, etc. Clicking the arrow allows you to expand or collapse texts under that heading. To remove it, you must change the style to Normal or another style that is not for headings.

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These are collapsible styles, you will not be able to remove that arrow, unless you switch the style to normal.

When you’re working on a long, complicated document, you can collapse everything except the part you want to focus on. The ability to collapse and expand content in your document is based on its outline level. You can quickly add an outline level and make part of your document collapsible by adding a heading using Word's built-in styles.

Expand/Collapse is a feature built-in to all the default heading (outline level) styles in Word beginning with Word 2013. There is no option to disable the Expand/Collapse feature unless you will be using the Normal style or you will be creating a custom style based on the Normal formatting. You can use this article as a reference on how to create a new style based on document formatting.

Not an answer just a comment. The expand and collapse feature is a nuisance at best and can not be removed or disabled in any way. When a document or procedure is so large that you need a TOC for functionality reasons, Headings are a great way to get around inside the doc.

However, the expand and collapse feature can cause issues as some who use the doc may (and in our case have) accidently click the arrow and collapse entire sections of docs, thus making visibility of said document or procedure go away, be hidden and caused stress in some.

This is not functionally acceptable and has caused issue within the organization I work. The fact I know about it and have shown others how to deal with it, does not mean it is a functional aspect that people want. What was wrong with not having it or maybe having both options?

Frankly, I am tired of having to constantly go our and expand procedures because people do not know or understand about the expand and collapse feature. It's a headache, and in my opinion should be removed from WORD.

I don't personally know anyone who uses it, but I know several who dislike it.

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As others have mentioned, this is most likely due to the OP using one of the Heading styles.

However, it can still happen that you will have the expand/collapse arrows when using the Normal style. This is a problem I ran into from time to time for years, and no amount of Googling ever provided me with a solution, but I finally figured it out.

If the text is in the Normal style, and you still have expand/collapse arrows, what you need to do is click on the line(s) where you see the arrows, open the paragraph settings, and on the Indents and Spacing tab find where it says Outline Level. It will probably be set to 'Level 1'. If you change it to 'Body Text', the arrows will disappear, and you will no longer have to worry about accidentally collapsing random sections of the text.

If you're using one of the Heading styles, this option will be locked at Level 1.

I hope that helps someone. I know it drove me crazy for a long time.

Highlight the text in question.

Navigate to References --> click "Add Text" drop down

Select do not show on table of Contents.

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I was plagued by this, especially as if you printed a doc out, having accidentally collapsed a para, it didn't print the collapsed part. I have solved it, however, by selecting all the text, right clicking (or going to the paragraph settings) and under the "general" settings, selecting "outline level". That seems to remove the little arrows, and the collapse function for the whole document.

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