Getting those unwanted grey lines out of Microsoft Word

They come from out of nowhere. And there's no obvious way to get rid of them.

Not an insect invasion. No, I'm talking about those irritating grey marks that suddenly appear at the corner of your text in Microsoft Word 2003. You can go for days, weeks, perhaps even years without seeing them. Then, with no apparent warning, they appear. Little right-angled lines to mock you. At which point you dive into your Microsoft Word settings.

Later, you'll jump out. Frustrated.

You see, those 'margin marks' or 'crop marks' only appear if you have Chinese, Japanese or Korean language support turned on in Microsoft Office Language Settings. And Microsoft Office might have done that for you without you really noticing.

The answer, according to Microsoft, is to remove the Asian language (or languages) from the enabled languages list. It's pretty straightforward... once you know the secret:

• First, make sure that the Text boundaries option in Word isn't selected. (Go to Tools in Word, click Options, select the View tab and clear the Text boundaries tick box).
• Now click Start, find Microsoft Office from the programs list, choose Microsoft Office Tools and click Microsoft Office 2003 Language Settings.
• Remove the languages you don't need from the Enabled languages list (e.g. everything except 'English') by selecting the unwanted language and clicking Remove.
• Finally, click OK.

Apparently it's a similar process for Word 2000 and Word 2002.

But that still leaves me with a question. Why would you want those margin marks for Asian languages and not for others?