Text Box duplicates

D

dicej007

I am creating a large flow sheet with a lot of text boxes and lines
connecting them.

After a few hours of work, all of a sudden, every new text box I make
(either inserting a new box or copying a previous one) develops an
automatic duplicate "shadow" text box a few inches away. Any text I
change in either box changes the text in the other box. If I delete
either one, the other goes away, too. But I can't create a new text
box without creating the duplicate automatically.

How can I get rid of these duplicate text boxes? Thanks.

Using Office X
 
J

John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]

I have no idea :) It sounds to me as though that document has corrupted
and become unstable. Look up "Linked Text Boxes" in the Help. I am fairly
sure that's what is happening: but I have no idea WHY.

If you were able to share a copy of that document with me I could take a
look. If it's what I think it might be, Microsoft would like to look at it
too. Please send me a plain-text email and I will tell you where to send
the document.

Cheers


I am creating a large flow sheet with a lot of text boxes and lines
connecting them.

After a few hours of work, all of a sudden, every new text box I make
(either inserting a new box or copying a previous one) develops an
automatic duplicate "shadow" text box a few inches away. Any text I
change in either box changes the text in the other box. If I delete
either one, the other goes away, too. But I can't create a new text
box without creating the duplicate automatically.

How can I get rid of these duplicate text boxes? Thanks.

Using Office X

--

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 (0) 4 1209 1410
 
D

dicej007

Thanks.

Last night I was able to make the problem (temporarily) go away.

The document was several pages of simple maps using lines and text
boxes to show location and I think it had just gotten too big. I
probably had several hundred text boxes already. I deleted several of
the pages and the duplicate boxes stopped occurring. I will split the
document up into individual pages rather than using one big one.

I wonder if there is a limit to the number of text boxes Word can
handle before it becomes unstable? I looked at the Text Box toolbar
when I selected these problem boxes and the "break text link" and
"next/previous link" commands were always greyed out so I don't know if
they truly were linked or not.

Just to see the difference I created a real linked box and I noted that
the overflow text from the primary box would appear in the linked box.
With my problem, the two boxes were exact duplicates with everything I
typed appearing in both boxes.

Very weird but I think it was just a matter of too many boxes for Word
to handle. Thanks again.
 
R

Ritika Pathak [MSFT]

Hi,

You mentioned in your response that the textboxes were not linked but were
more like shadows of the new text boxes added to the document.

This is indeed weird behavior and we would like to take a look. It would be
great if you could send a copy of your document. If it has confidential
information, please send a copy without this information or send details
like number of text boxes and other objects in the document which could help
me in recreating it and tracking the buggy behavior. A document copy would
be preferred though.

Thanks,
Ritika [MSFT]
MacWord Test,
Mac Business Unit, Microsoft
 

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