Word X - display/insertion point synchronization weirdness

[MD Hills]

I'm running Word X (10.1.4) under OSX (10.3.2).

I've recently been editing a document that is pure text (some styles
and such, but no inserted objects or other links), and occasionally
when I scroll around and start to edit, the text displayed on the line
being edited refreshes to that of a different line in the document!
(it strongly reminds me of editing something in a unix visual editor
with incorrect termcap settings)

Has anyone else experienced this before?
(I'm in "Normal" display mode, with scaling set to 150%; I'm wondering
if one of those might be the culprit?)

Thanks,
Matt

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Matt,

The scaling may be problematic; I really don't know. However, there are a
couple of things you can try in order to eliminate other possibilities.

1) In case it's corruption in the document itself, turn on Show/Hide
formatting, copy all but the very last paragraph mark and paste into a blank
new document.

2) Test your Normal template: Quit Word and navigate to your Normal
template which should be in /Applications/Microsoft Office X/Templates/.
Rename Normal to something else (like OldNormal), then relaunch Word. If
this fixes the problem but you have customizations, etc, in OldNormal that
you want to maintain, you can use Organizer to transfer those from OldNormal
to the newly-created Normal template. Then you can trash the old renamed
file. To learn how to use Organizer, see here (use IE not Safari to view
this site):
<http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/WordMac/MacWordNormalTemplate.htm>

If this doesn't fix the problem, quit Word again, trash the new Normal and
rename OldNormal back to Normal.

3) Test your Preference files: Quit *all* Office Applications. Navigate
to your ~/library/preferences/Microsoft folder. Rename the Microsoft
Component Preferences, Word Settings (10), and Microsoft Office Settings
(10) files. When you restart Word, these files will be recreated. If all
is well, you can trash the old files. You will have to reset some
Preferences and AutoCorrect settings.

If this doesn't help, you can trash the new files and rename the old ones
back.

Post back with your results.

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/WordMac/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Matt:

"Normal" mode is the culprit, and it's not a problem

In Normal mode Word suppresses pagination. As a result, it really has
little idea which line the text belongs on. When you make a change, Word
re-computes for the current line and those below to the bottom of the
screen. Things may change.

Normal mode is lean, mean and hungry. Everything in Normal View is stripped
back to give the fastest possible response and the easiest view for writing
and editing. This is the view I use 95 per cent of my time. The larger
your documents, the more time and battery life you save working in Normal
View.

Page Layout View is much more power-hungry. It offers about 95 per cent
WYSIWYG. But to do this, all of the justification and pagination services
are turned on, and the pagination engine is running continuously.

Just before you print, you should go into Print Preview. Print Preview is
within one pixel of 100 per cent WYSIWYG. But it is savagely power hungry.
You will see the CPU jump up to double and on PowerBooks the fan will deafen
you! This mode reads the font outlines and the printer driver in real time.
You *can* edit in Print Preview (just cluck the magnifying glass off...) but
don't do much of it: Word is really struggling for CPU and memory in this
view and crashes are likely if you get too enthusiastic

Hope this helps