Strange behaviour of backspace key in region with grey background

[markharr]

I have used Libreoffice successfully for a while, but one document is giving me trouble.

Page 1 is fine, but the following 50 have a grey background behind each paragraph.

I can add text as normal, but if I use the backspace or delete keys from page 3 onwards, they perform their function, but then the cursor jumps to the end of page 1 and types 5 ‘degree’ characters.
ctrl-Z twice undoes the weird and annoying behaviour.

I understand that the grey background usually identifies a field and choosing ‘Hide field shading’ indeed removes the grey, but the delete-key behaviour continues, so it seems like I have a 50 page field. But using the field commands don’t show it to be one.

Page 2 is a TOC, so I thought that might have somehow connected itself to the following 50 pages, but removing that TOC doesn’t help either.

I’ve tried cutting and pasting into a new document, but the behaviour follows.

Any ideas on where to look for the problem ?

Mac OS X 15.7.3 (latest)
I enclose a file containing parts of the first 3 pages. (junk3)
junk3.odt (17.1 KB)

[EarnestAl]

I would be inclined to set up a new blank document with paragraph styles and page styles as needed. Then delete the TOC, copy all and paste as unformatted text into the new document. Apply Body Text style to the entire new text then go through and apply other styles where required.
junk3_131144EA.odt (16.1 KB)

[ajlittoz]

Has your document ever been manipulated with M$ Word? I can see a lot of character styles with name ListLabel n, n=1…9, and one WWNum1 list style. These are usually symptoms of DOCX import. Also, you have extensive direct formatting, no character style application, vertical spacing with direct formatting (typical Word workflow), manual page break preceding your Heading 1s (while the page break could be configured inside the style definition). Direct formatting is the source of many problems as soon as a document is larger then 3 pages.

Finer forensics analysis shows you have a field starting immediately after the linebreak in page 1 (following “but perhaps a writer.”). This field extends to the end of the document (it stops right before the last paragraph mark). Field type is unknown (blank).

IMHO, this is a hand over from some DOCX field construct Writer was unable to convert.

When working with M$ material, be extremely cautious about converted formats. The only safe way is to paste existing data as unformatted (so that no alien formatting is imported) and apply “pure” LO styles.

[markharr]

Both of you think the file is corrupted, so looks like I’ll be starting from scratch.
I was just hoping I was missing a quick fix.
Interesting that it is indeed a 50-page field, but sounds like there’s no simple command to just stop it being a field ?
Although I have never used MS word, I have edited elsewhere (most recently Google Docs).
And the file has behaved well for months, but just recently developed the psychiatric issues.
Anyway, thanks for confirming it’s some form of corruption, and saving me time trying to find the magic command that fixes it.

[EarnestAl]

There seems to be some sort of MS form field (should import as Section in Writer) but the end part is not there and I think it would take longer to fix your original than to apply styles to plain text.

I do know that Google Docs will corrupt .odt files. If you are going to export a Google edited document, it is best to export it as .docx because it does least damage to that format.