And how do I recover? I was staying at a hotel and did some writing and editing on my manuscript using the hotel computer, which only had Word installed. In LibreOffice I’ve been inserting horizontal lines within chapters to separate different scenes; I couldn’t find a command for this in Word so I typed three asterisks, intending to come back and put the lines in when I returned home. But when Word saw those three asterisks it inserted a semblance of a horizontal line, so I thought I was all right and kept using it.
Now that I’m home and trying to finish my story, those Word lines are showing up in LibreOffice as a line of heavy vertical hashes. Worse, when I attempt to delete them they disappear and then reappear in the manuscript at some random position. I can’t remove them and keep them out; I’ve tried exiting and then restarting LibreOffice but they still show up. If I try to cut and paste the lines into a new file those hashed lines follow me around like a hitchhiking ghost from the Haunted Mansion. If I were still using WordPerfect I’d use “Reveal Codes” to see what was in the file and edit it, but I’m not aware of a similar functionality. Can anyone help (aside from reminding me never to use Microsoft software again?)?