Strange undeletable zeros/numbered lists?

I opened a .rtf file in LibreOffice, and there are a bunch of strange, bold zeros that I cannot delete and which were not present when I viewed the same file in Microsoft Word and in TextEdit (I am using a Mac). Sometimes, when I frantically clicked around trying to highlight them or manipulate them in any way, they would show a gray background behind them, but I still could not select them or delete them. They seemed to coincide with blank lines that had been created by pressing the return key repeatedly, but this is not constant throughout the document.

Upon closing and reopening the same document, all of the areas where there were zeros sometimes shows a numbered list that also cannot be deleted.

Has anyone heard of this before? How can I get rid of these zeros/lists that cannot be deleted? And what does the gray background mean?

I discovered that, by right clicking on the offending undeletable numbers, and going to the option “bullets and numbering,” I was able to click a button marked “remove,” that deleted the numbers one at a time. I had to repeat this process nine times to get rid of all of the numbers, but they are gone now, much to my relief.

However, even though I found a solution, I would like to know if there is a way to remove these unwanted numbered lists that is faster than deleting them one at the time through a convoluted menu. I’m also curious as to what, exactly, these undeletable numbers were.

Does anyone know what I’m talking about?

@mactutor10, Are you still having the same problem with the latest builds of LibreOffice? I believe that some RTF import bugs have been fixed over the last few months.

@mactutor10 – Please feel free to file an enhancement bug if this is still an issue to you and you feel like there should be a more intuitive, faster mechanism for removing the numbers.