How to Display Non-Printing Characters in Microsoft Outlook
generalize
- Non-printing characters help identify formatting issues and ensure consistency in emails.
- Enable non-printing characters in classic Outlook by clicking “¶” or pressing Ctrl+Shift+8.
- Unfortunately, you can’t display non-printing characters in the new Outlook, but there are other ways to monitor your layout.
Non-printing characters are formatting tags that determine how an email is laid out. They can help you identify frustrating formatting issues, ensure consistency, and make precise edits to emails before sending.
Non-printing characters in classic Outlook
If you’re using classic Outlook, you can display non-printing characters when composing a new message or replying. Place your cursor in the body of the email, go to the Format Text tab, and click the ¶ icon. Or, press Ctrl+Shift+8.
To hide them again, click the same icon or use the same keyboard shortcut.
Classic Outlook displays most basic non-printing characters, including:
- · For spaces (blank key),
- → for tabs (Tab key)
- ¶ For a paragraph (Enter key),
- ↵ for line breaks (Shift+Enter), and
- ° represents a non-breaking space (Ctrl+Shift+Space).
Because these characters are only used to help you with layout and formatting, they won’t be visible to people who receive and open your email. Also, as the name suggests, if you print emails, they won’t appear on the page.
Non-printing characters in new Outlook
one of the Many shortcomings of the new Outlook Yes – as of December 2024 –You cannot display non-printable characters When composing a message, whether you display the classic ribbon or the simplified ribbon. What’s more, since the new Outlook and Outlook on the web are modeled after each other, this also applies to the web browser version of the mail client.
Until Microsoft thinks it’s a good idea to reintroduce non-printing characters into the new Outlook desktop app (sooner rather than later!), you can draft email content in: Microsoft Word, where are you? able Display non-printable characters Via the “¶” icon in the “Home” tab of the ribbon or by pressing Ctrl+Shift+8.
When you’ve finished typing, press Ctrl+A, then Ctrl+X to select and cut the text, and then press Ctrl+V to paste it into the Outlook messages pane.
While most structural layouts displayed as non-printing characters (such as non-breaking spaces and line feeds) can be copied successfully from Word to Outlook, other elements (such as page breaks and tabs) cannot, so keep this in mind One point: This method is being used. To check what formatting is retained in Outlook, copy and paste the email content back into Microsoft Word, and then check for non-printable characters.
Another option is to adjust the Outlook editor settings to flag problems that you might recognize using non-printable characters. After starting a new message or reply, go to the Options tab, click the Editor drop-down menu, and select Editor Settings.
Then, enable any editor settings to temporarily override non-printing characters. For example, the “space” non-printing character in Word can help notice that you accidentally typed two spaces, so checking “space” in your grammar settings will ensure that when you click ” This error is correctly identified in .
You can also modify the paragraph formatting of your email in the Text Format tab to resolve the missing pilcrow (¶) paragraph mark. For example, clicking “Add space after paragraph” will ensure that you don’t have to press Enter twice to create a gap between paragraphs.
Additionally, this will make it easier for you to spot the difference between paragraph breaks (number 1 in the screenshot below) and line breaks (number 2 in the screenshot below) without having to use non-printing characters.
If you prefer non-printing characters and, like me, are frustrated by the inability to access them in the new version of Outlook, go to the Help tab on the ribbon and click Support. From there, you can make suggestions and submit them directly to Microsoft product teams.
2025-01-06 01:30:16