“Phantom” tab at start of line cannot be deleted

Question

I have a document that has some paragraphs formatted with a seemingly unchangeable first-line indent. In paragraph format, the left indent is zero, and first line indent is "none". When turning on "show paragraph marks", a tab character appears in the indent area. However it is impossible to delete the tab. It acts like it is the newline, and merges the text with the previous line if backspace used at the start of the line.

Setting the format to Normal does nothing. Clear Formatting does nothing.

This problem occurs on the line after a Heading 1 style. The properties of Heading 1 have "Normal" for style for following paragraph.

Inserting text elsewhere in the document does not exhibit this problem.

What is the cause of this "phantom tab" and how do I eliminate it?

Answer 1

First try turning on show formatting marks in Microsoft Word. If you cannot see any character in that paragraph then almost certainly the problem is happening because you have first line indent set under paragraph settings.

Right click on the paragraph -> Paragraph Properties -> Indent -> Reset numbers there to 0.

Answer 2

Can you copy the format unit and past it into a "find" box? If so, you could then "replace" the phantom tab with nothing or a space? Might be worth a try.