Word formatting problem

March 12, 2009 8:33 AM

MS Word formatting issue: it applies any changes to entire document. How do I make Word only apply formatting changes to the selected text?

If I highlight one word or sentence or section and try to change the format (bold, change font size, add bullets) it will apply the change to the entire document. Then when I hit undo, it removes the change from the document except for the selected section.

What gives? How do I fix it?

posted by sulaine to computers & internet (11 comments total)

Version of Word and OS if you will.

On a Mac I would trash:

user > Library > Preferences: com.microsoft.*

and

user > Library > Preferences: Microsfoft (the entire folder).

Make sure you're doing this at the user level, and make sure no MS apps are currently running while you are doing this.
posted by cjorgensen at 8:45 AM on March 12

Specifically, I don't know. Generally, it sounds like Word is screwed up. Word can get broken in a lot of strange ways that are hard to categorize, and it continues to amaze me. Try restarting Word. If that doesn't help, try restarting your pc. If it's persists, check out some common fixes for strange Word problems. This is where I start when Word is acting strangely (like, the mouse works fine on toolbars and menus, but does not work at all in the document area. wtf Word?), and it's usually fixed by the time I run through several of those steps.
posted by Liver at 8:48 AM on March 12

Sorry, it is 2003, on a PC.
posted by sulaine at 8:53 AM on March 12

This is definately not the way MS Word is supposed to behave. It sounds like the Selection object code has been damaged in some way, as format changes are only supposed to apply to the selected text. Has your copy of the program always acted this way? Do you have the disk? Can you re-install?
posted by jasper411 at 9:06 AM on March 12

I'm sure I've had that happen to me before. I think it's something to do with Styles... i.e. when you're changing the text formatting, it's applying that to the style, which is used throughout the document, and so everything else changes.

Pretty sure it was on an "inherited" document, i.e. not one i'd created myself. Therefore might be something to do with taking documents created with older versions?
posted by saintsguy at 11:01 AM on March 12

There's a set of conditions that will cause this to happen in normal operation of Word:

A: The current style properties include the "Automatically update" option
B: you have a paragraph selected when changing the format of a selection

To see if you are selecting paragraphs and not just individual words, turn on the "Show/Hide (formatting marks)" button, either in the standard toolbar or the "reveal formatting" option in Styles and Formatting. With that on, see if that little paragraph mark is highlighted, too.

Also, in Styles and Formatting, check the properties for the style that is active to see if the "Automatically update" option is checked.
posted by buzzv at 11:27 AM on March 12

I tried some of the stuff on the Word troubleshooting page, nothing worked. It is doing it on all documents, even when I open a new blank document and type in a few words. It does it whether I select the paragraph or not, but it will just change the formatting correctly if I select only a few letters from a word.
posted by sulaine at 11:47 AM on March 12

I've had this same exact problem with Word for years. I just Ctrl-Z to get the result I wanted, and curse MS.

Did you try unchecking "Automatically update" for the current style as buzzv suggests? Perhaps that will do the trick.
posted by Outlawyr at 1:26 PM on March 12

I did check that my styles are not Automatically updating. The box is unchecked, but when checked the problem is the same.
posted by sulaine at 4:00 PM on March 12

Turn on "Tools/Track Changes" and reproduce the problem. A revision bubble should appear for this, probably at the top of the doc saying "Style Definition: blah blah". Maybe something else will show up. What does it report the change to be?
posted by buzzv at 8:21 PM on March 12

When track changes is on and I change the format, the little change bubble is only at the highlighted portion and when I crtl z it does not change (but the format change goes from the entire document to just the highlight portion).
posted by sulaine at 11:20 AM on April 6