Equation editor problem

[FFPF]

In the equation editor's design ribbon are the commands to set the style of
the equation (professional, linear and normal text).

I added a stock Expansion of a Sum equation and then pressed the Linear
option, then the Normal text option and then repeatedly pressed the Linear
button. Not only did the equation slowly become saturated with / characters,
but eventually Word stopped responding.

 

[Tom]

Instead of clicking the "Linear equation" button, unselect the "normal text"
button in the ribbon. This should change the equation back to linear, as it
was before.

If you try and turn it into a linear equation while it is still in normal
text, the normal text option seems to prevent Word from applying any
formatting, and so instead escapes any special characters with a '\'. Doing
this repeatedly will just cause the '\'s to be escaped with more '\'s,
resulting in your problem.