Bold does not stay on when CTRL+B at insertion point

[JustJules]

I saw a message from February on this subject, but none of the
workarounds work for me, so I am bringing this back up.

In one of my documents, I place my insertion point in a paragraph and
press CTRL+B (or click the B for bold button in the toolbar). When I
start typing, I expect the text to be bold. It isn't. Upon closer
inspection, both the keyboard command and clicking the button cause the
B button to flicker on briefly, then immediately deselect. The net
result of this is that I can't format as I type, something that I am
finding a real handicap. The same thing is occurring when using CTRL+I
or the Italic button to create italics.

There's nothing really special about this document except that it has a
lot of numbered lists in it. I switched from manually numbering the
lists to doing so through an outline style, but that was only a
band-aid. The problem came back. The document is not a form.

Things I have tried:
Hiding the headers and footers - This did not help.
Tools>Options>Edit>When selecting, automatically select entire word -
changing this setting did not make any difference, no matter which way
it was set
Rebuilding the template - this worked briefly, then "relapsed".
Removing manual list numbering restarts - I thought this was the
cause, but the problem returned a while afterward

This must sound like a rather minor annoyance, but it's a serious
time-eater, because it is causing extra proofreading time for someone
to go behind and mark up the things that I had instinctively made bold
-- or tried to! -- but did not "stick." It's also causing an extra
round of revisions.

Oddly, I can only find one mention of this problem anywhere on the
whole internet. Has anyone else experienced this?

 

[Carol]

You may have locked style. You should be able to work around this by creating
character styles or you can use the built-in Emphasis and Strong styles for
Italic and bold.

If they dont show on the drop down list, depress your shift key while
opening the drop down list and then all all styles that are available will be
listed.

 

[JustJules]

What is a locked style? I'm willing to rebuild or change the styles to
"fix" them if I can get to the bottom of the problem. I would very much
like to get to the bottom of this. I am able to create bold text by
typing the text, then going back and selecting it and applying the Bold
style, but this has literally taken one of Word's (important) features
away from me.

I have discovered that every time I get a document that is "clean" of
this nasty behavior, it re-emerges.