Page view disintegration when scrolling

[Dick Powell]

When in Page View and scrolling especially (but not exclusively) across
page breaks, the text disintegrates - it shows the first line repeated
right down the page. Scrolling back makes no difference. All I see is
the same line repeated, or sometimes it just goes blank. The only way
to re-establish the text correctly is to scroll by page (ie: pressing
in the space above or below the scroll slider). I've lived with this
since we bought Office 2004 and it remained when I upgraded to Tiger.
The other problem I live with is speed - for example, inserting the
curser can take 3 seconds; a copy and paste of a sentence about the
same, changing the font on a paragraph or using the format painter . .
.. there is always a notable delay. I am using Word v11.1, running on a
super reliable Powerbook G4 running Tiger 10.4.2

 

[Elliott Roper]

When in Page View and scrolling especially (but not exclusively) across
page breaks, the text disintegrates - it shows the first line repeated
right down the page. Scrolling back makes no difference. All I see is
the same line repeated, or sometimes it just goes blank. The only way
to re-establish the text correctly is to scroll by page (ie: pressing
in the space above or below the scroll slider). I've lived with this
since we bought Office 2004 and it remained when I upgraded to Tiger.
The other problem I live with is speed - for example, inserting the
curser can take 3 seconds; a copy and paste of a sentence about the
same, changing the font on a paragraph or using the format painter . .
. there is always a notable delay. I am using Word v11.1, running on a
super reliable Powerbook G4 running Tiger 10.4.2

You are not alone. I sometimes see truly horrible scroll tearing on
Word and only Word. Still on v.X. Like you, I like to stay in page
view. If I had to operate in normal view all day, I would ditch Word
for more documents and use more of emacs and LaTex ;-)

I get speed by turning off every clicky toy, especially the malarkey
along the bottom of the window like word count and page count.
I usually have all the scroll bars and the ruler turned off, but that
is sheer masochism. Navigation by keystroke gets lots of speed back,
not least is the time saved looking for the goddamn mouse under all
this paper.

Are you, by any chance, using two monitors? That seems to bring on
antisocial behavior in quite a few applications, including Word, where
for me, it encourages it to jam documents under the menu bar.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

You are not alone. I sometimes see truly horrible scroll tearing on
Word and only Word. Still on v.X. Like you, I like to stay in page
view. If I had to operate in normal view all day, I would ditch Word
for more documents and use more of emacs and LaTex ;-)

FWIW, I've also gotten this once or twice in Word. I get a similar
effect ALL the time in Firefox when I view page source.

 

[step_andy]

I am getting this on my G4 with 2 monitors running Word 11.1.
Document on main monitor runs fine, however on 2nd it tends to break up. The
only difference is video cards. Main display is driven with stock AGP ATI
Pro whilst second is hooked up to PCI ATI. When I drag the "broken up"
document from PCI to AGP driven monitor, all is fixed.
Cheers
andy

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Normally, if you page "back" about four screen fulls and come forward again,
Word will fix it for you.

What happened was that Word got too busy and trashed the screen buffer. It
will refill it if you page back far enough to empty it again.

I am getting this on my G4 with 2 monitors running Word 11.1.
Document on main monitor runs fine, however on 2nd it tends to break up. The
only difference is video cards. Main display is driven with stock AGP ATI
Pro whilst second is hooked up to PCI ATI. When I drag the "broken up"
document from PCI to AGP driven monitor, all is fixed.
Cheers
andy

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Clive Huggan]

Thanks, John.

I get this phenomenon *very* occasionally and hadn't thought it might be the
second display. Set-up is: 1.5GB 17" PowerBook about 15 months old, 1 GB
RAM; OS 10.3.8; Word 2004 fully updated; second monitor is either recent
model Apple 20" wide-screen LCD display or (at my 2nd office) 2-3 years old
17" Apple non-wide-screen (deep -- better for A4 Word docs at 125%) LCD
display).

Whichever, I am almost always in Normal view, except when I need to force
pagination or quickly inspect some explicit formatting [sorry, Elliott -- I
*am* a disappointment]. And I have always instantly fixed it by hitting the
Page Down key 2-3 or 4 times followed by ditto Page Up.

My scrollbar arrows are very slow unless I move my trackball (or "roll" my
finger slightly if using the integral PowerBook trackpad) so the arrow moves
a pixel or two. I count that as a penalty I have to pay for using Word
without having to be on Windows. In practice I rarely scroll because of
that handicap.

I now deal with the "jammed under toolbars" phenomenon with a macro that
hides my toolbars. I think I described in another thread a few weeks back
how I have duplicate Word toolbars that display on the second screen, which
I can make invisible with a keystroke -- very handy when the doc is jammed
under the top toolbars or when I need more vertical space (not having
Elliott's iron discipline to pull off the rulers, status bar etc, albeit I
have disabled active word count etc).

FWIW

Cheers,
Clive
=======

 

[Dick Powell]

John

Thanks for the screen buffer explanation, even if it doesn't solve the
problem! I am using two screens in an identical setup to Clive. Is
there anything that can be done to rectify it?

Dick

 

[Dick Powell]

John

Thanks for the screen buffer explanation, even if it doesn't solve the
problem! I am using two screens in an identical setup to Clive. Is
there anything that can be done to rectify it?

Dick

 

[Clive Huggan]

Dick,

I think the answer is:

1. Use Normal view most of the time (Command-Option-n, Command-Option-p
flicks quickly between the views).

2. Use Page Up / Page Down keys as mentioned (or Command-Home followed by
Command-Option-z). Or record a macro to do several of these keystrokes in
succession.

But is this phenomenon a frequent problem for you, Dick? I'm hardly ever
seeing it -- maybe once every week or two, working on long, complex
documents about half the day for most days.

Looking back to your original post, you seem to have other problems (e.g.,
inserting cursor, pasting) that are not normal. Does it happen only in the
one document? Are there any features in the documents such as many tables?
How much RAM do you have? I suspect the frequency of the problem has more to
do with a specific malaise in your documents.

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is at least 7 hours different from the US and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
============================================================

 

[Clive Huggan]

Thanks John -- come to think of it I *do* page back, not forward.

Cheers,

Clive
======

 

[Hartz]

I am using only one monitor, and this scrolling bug happens in Suitcas
only when I use the scroll bar, not the arrows. I can not find a fix t
this anywhere..

 

[larry_lowe]

I am using only one monitor, and this scrolling bug happens in Suitcase
only when I use the scroll bar, not the arrows. I can not find a fix to
this anywhere...

I have an experience that might be helpful. I've been using Word X for
years without incident with two monitors, usually the LCD display on
one of my PowerBooks, and an external LCD monitor (currently, a 17"
Apple Studio Monitor). I only started having the problem described in
this thread when I switched the resolution on my Studio Monitor from
1280 x 960 to 1280 x 1024. And the problem disappeared completely when
I switched back to 1280 x 960.

BTW, I use a lot of different apps, and I only had the scrolling bug
when using MS Word X, and only when using an external monitor in the
non-mirror arrangement.

Hope this is helpful to someone.

-Larry