Rectangular box of text stuck over Word document

[linny]

I'm sorry I don't know how to describe this real well. Our people who write up the manuals for the compressors we build use Word. The manuals are kind of complex (lots of drawings from autocad, footnotes, sections, etc.) Several times a day, they get a really wild thing happening. A rectangular area of the screen suddenly shows text from some other place in the document. You can reduce Word to a window instead of full screen and move it around, but the rectangular area stays put. If you minimize Word completely, the area will stay right there on the desktop. It is really weird. The only way to get rid of it is to exit Word. We have had it happen both in Word 97 and 2000 on new Dell XP's and on a Gateway Windows 2000. We have tried turning down colors to 16bit and turning off all the fancy XP screen stuff to no avail. It only happens to people working on our manuals. Has anyone else ever heard of anything like this?

Linny

 

[itmasterw]

While I have not seen this, I have encountered a lot of similar things of this nature. Unfortunbently, it could be a number of things. The first thing I would do is check the system recources of my systems verses the resources I need aat the time I am using word at the time of the problems. Then, and this shgould be done anyway, I would go to Microsaft's site and download the latest Service Packs for Office and you Windows operating system. I would also check the systems, that htis does not work on, for viruses; and make sure the virus program has the latest updates. If the users copy and past Excel tables into their documents it can lead to problems like this. Their really is not much you can do about you existing documents. However, the best way to do theis is through technique called liking nad imbeding. this allows you to pring in one application into another, without any conflics. After all this, you may find that you need to reinstall Office. Some of the files may have gotting corrupted and this would recreate them.
I hope this helps.

 

[itmasterw]

While I have not seen this, I have encountered a lot of similar things of this nature. Unfortunbently, it could be a number of things. The first thing I would do is check the system recources of my systems verses the resources I need aat the time I am using word at the time of the problems. Then, and this shgould be done anyway, I would go to Microsaft's site and download the latest Service Packs for Office and you Windows operating system. I would also check the systems, that htis does not work on, for viruses; and make sure the virus program has the latest updates. If the users copy and past Excel tables into their documents it can lead to problems like this. Their really is not much you can do about you existing documents. However, the best way to do theis is through technique called liking nad imbeding. this allows you to pring in one application into another, without any conflics. then sometimes the Normal templeate( Normal.dot), in Word, becomes corrupted and has to be replaced with Normal.Old. This file should be first copyed, just in case you need it, and then renamed with Normal.Old. After all this, you may find that you need to reinstall Office. Some of the files may have gotting corrupted and this would recreate them.
I hope this helps.

 

[linny]

Thanks for anwering. Most of those things we have tried. I wasn't sure about the linking and embedding part? Our manuals may have 60 or more autocad drawings in them. We do it by clicking INSERT, FILE. We click on a .dwg file and that brings up autocad with the drawing. We edit and crop the drawing and save it to Word. Is that the best way to do it? Some of the manuals are in 3 sections: English, French and Spanish. Could either of those things cause video problems? Office and the OS's are patched to current releases. We see the video problem in both Office 97 and 2000. We're getting ready to try Office XP today.

 

[Digga]

Hi Linny,

what about the graphics capability of your hardware, you'd be surprised how many errors are caused by this.

Try looking at the file in Outline or Normal view and see if you can find anything obvious. In Word XP there's a neat Opena and Repair option on the Open button in the Open File dialogue box. Try this and see if there are any corrupt bookmarks, styles, tables etc..

Digga

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