What do the underlines in my document mean?
If text on your screen is underlined, but you didn't apply underline formatting to it, it could appear as underlined for any of the following reasons.
- Red or green wavy underlines
- When you automatically check spelling and grammar, Microsoft Word uses wavy red underlines to indicate possible spelling errors and wavy green underlines to indicate possible grammatical errors.
- Red wavy underlines in an e-mail header
- Word automatically checks the names in the e-mail header against names in the Address Book. If multiple names are found that match the name you type, a red wavy line appears under the name, indicating that you must choose a name.
- Blue wavy underlines
- Word uses wavy blue underlines to indicate possible instances of inconsistent formatting.
- Purple wavy underlines (wavy vertical lines may also appear in the margin)
- In an XML document, Word uses purple wavy vertical lines and underlines to indicate XML structure that does not adhere to the XML schema that is attached to the document.
Note XML features, except for saving documents as XML with the Word XML schema, are available only in Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 and stand-alone Microsoft Office Word 2003.
- Blue or other color underlines
- Hyperlink display text is blue and underlined by default.
- Purple or other color underlines
- Followed hyperlinks appear as purple and underlined by default.
- Red or other color single or double underlines (vertical bars may also appear in the left or right margin)
- By default, newly inserted text is marked as underlined when the Track Changes feature is used. Vertical bars
— called changed lines — may also appear in the left or right border of text that contains tracked changes. - Purple dotted underlines
- Smart tags appear with purple dotted underlines beneath text. You can use smart tags to perform actions in Word that you'd normally open other programs to do.