MS Word Editing Issues

[ThankYousGuys]

Hello, I will be using Word for the next few hours and would appreciate feedback for the particular problem I seem to be having.

When I do anything to edit the document, the entire document changes. For instance, if I change the alignment from Justified to Left, the entire document will be aligned to the Left. Same instance goes for editing fonts, styles, bold, italic, underline, etc.

Next, after the entire document changes if I UNDO the edit, the particular area I was editing remains changed while the rest of the document returns to its original format. In other words, it's as if there was never a problem. Word seems to understand that I don't want it to change the entire document.

How do I undo this option? Is this a regular option that I am not seeing? Thank you.

-ThankYousGuys

 

[tf1]

See

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/WholeDocumentReformatted.htm

Regards: tf1

 

[BlueHorizon]

Hi,
Unless you have macros and/or AutoText entries saved to your normal.dot, sometimes just deleting the old normal.dot and re-opening Word to create a new normal.dot will eliminate those kinds of issues.
HTH,

Best,
Blue Horizon

 

[tf1]

It is the result of having set the style to automatically update. A format change made to a paragraph will update the style and thus propagated to all instances of the same style throughout the document.

That's clearly explained in the link.


Regards: tf1

 

[macropod]

I'd hate to take Blue Horizon's approach, with all the customised Styles I've got in my Normal.dot, even if it didn't have macros, etc.

Cheers

[MS MVP - Word]

 

[fumei]

That is the BIG problem with tech support having "delete normal.dot" as the basic rule. Which they do.

Which is also a reason to avoid having any macros, or AutoText, or customized styles in Normal.dot. My normal.dot has virtually nothing. No macros - although I use many many macros; no customized styles - although all my documents ONLY use customized styles; and no AutoText - although I use many AutoText entries.

They can delete normal.dot all they want. I don't really care.

However, I have seen it done many times, where tech support simply deleted a user's normal.dot as the opening "troubleshooting". Without asking the user about what may be in that normal.dot....like Autotext entries. Poof! Gone.

True, very true, that deleting normal.dot can help. It is a valid option for trying to fix things. I have found however, that NOT putting crap in there in the first place slows down possible corruption of normal.

In this case, tf1 is probably correct, and the explanation/fix is clearly covered with the linked page.

faq219-2884

Gerry
My paintings and sculpture

 

[tf1]

If tech supt just went one step further and renamed normal.dot as normal.bad at least the user's customisations would be rescuable!


Regards: tf1

 

[fumei]

I have been trying to get our tech support/Help Desk to do just that for years. I have requested (formally) that they do a rename of normal.dot first....but no, they never do.

faq219-2884

Gerry
My paintings and sculpture

 

[macropod]

I keep my own backup copy of Normal.dot (named abNormal.dot!) just in case something get's fouled up or Normal.dot disappears.

Cheers

[MS MVP - Word]

 

[fumei]

Oh yes, a wise thing to do. Most of my things are in global templates, but I make darn sure that I have multiple backups of those files. Both locally, and on a server, and on disk. I once came in and they had imaged my computer with no warning, and all local files were lost. They do NOT backup local disks whenever they re-image machines.

faq219-2884

Gerry
My paintings and sculpture