Something is wrong....

[Casey Wilson]

.....with my MS Word 2002 that came packaged with XP in a Dell computer.
It worked fine until a few days ago, maybe a week or more.
What has started happening is:

Starting out with flush-left: If I've typed several lines or
paragraphs (with hard returns at the end of each), then cursor back to a
previous paragraph or line and invoke either the "center" button on the
toolbar or press CTRL-E, then everything in the entire document centers. If
I then press CTRL-Z, the paragraph or line where my cursor is stays center
and the remainder of the text goes back to flush-left.
The same thing happens if down in the text somewhere, I select Bullets
or Numbering. That is, the Bullets or Numbering goes all the way back to
the beginning of the document - pressing CTRL-Z corrects all the graphs
ahead of where my cursor is.

I tried working with the MS Knowledge Base, but..., well in my opinion
it is somewhat less than productive. The best I could do was find some vague
reference to macro viruses, but only because it is a weird phenom.
Let me repeat, this is something that has just started happening in the
last several days or couple of weeks. I've been using Word without the
problem for two or three years.
It isn't all that difficult to do an "undo," but....
Any suggestions?

 

[mpt]

I experience the same problem but have learned to live with it just using
Undo.

It's also erratic and sometimes it doesn't happen. I seem to remember that
there have been times when I did not allow the selection of text to be
changed to include the paragraph mark at the end of the sentence and the
change was kept local but that solution has not been consistent either.

Richard

 

[Casey Wilson]

Richard,

Thanks for responding. I guess my problem is multifold. First, I don't
want to "live with it..." I want to fix whatever has gone wrong. Like I said
in my original post, this is something new -- I've used the software for a
couple years in my freelance writing.
Secondly, I'm nervous about this being a malignant something that is
going to expand and conflict with other features. Like, is this an indicator
of a macro-virus?
Anyway, thanks for your response.

Regards,

Casey Wilson
Freelance Writer and Photographer

 

[anon k]

You don't happen to have your body text (or 'normal') style set to
automatically update, by any chance?

 

[Casey Wilson]

You don't happen to have your body text (or 'normal') style set to
automatically update, by any chance?

Tools>Options>Save>Promt to save.... is not selected. I guess that
means do it automatically. but that's always been set that way.

???

 

[Casey Wilson]

Tools>Options>Save>Promt to save.... is not selected. I guess that
means do it automatically. but that's always been set that way.

???

Ah, wait, there's more. Under Format>Styles>[select normal]>Modify, the
box "Automatically Update" is selected. Now that one I don't remember
selecting or not. Wracking my brains, I can't remember any association to
that and the beginning of my problems -- not to say there isn't one. Nor do
I remember changing the Normal template. I have created custom styles to fit
various style guides required by publishers of my work.

 

[Casey Wilson]

Tools>Options>Save>Promt to save.... is not selected. I guess that
means do it automatically. but that's always been set that way.

???

Ah, wait, there's more. Under Format>Styles>[select normal]>Modify, the
box "Automatically Update" is selected. Now that one I don't remember
selecting or not. Wracking my brains, I can't remember any association to
that and the beginning of my problems -- not to say there isn't one. Nor
do I remember changing the Normal template. I have created custom styles
to fit various style guides required by publishers of my work.

Hmmm, on the other hand, none of the problems I'm having are
related to any of the formats shown on the Normal template.

 

[mpt]

Anon K's idea exactly reproduces the problems I've had. Unchecking the
automatic update option stops the document-wide changes.

Thanks very much.

Richard

 

[Casey Wilson]

BRAVO!! Next time you are in Ridgecrest, the lunch and beverage is
on me. That fixed the problem.

 

[anon k]

BRAVO!! Next time you are in Ridgecrest, the lunch and beverage is
on me. That fixed the problem.

Glad that it's fixed.

That little checkbox is very, very useful when your document is mostly
or entirely written, and you're refining the layout - but up to that
point, it can produce distraction more than anything else.