Please help me unravel some quirks in Word 2008 for Mac: grey documents, memories of paginations past, mixed text sizes that go all 12 point
August 25, 2010 8:33 AM   Subscribe

Mac Word mysteries: 1. Certain Word docs will go all grey when I start typing and will stay that way until I scroll away from that visible portion and then scroll back. 2. Likewise, toward the bottom of the page, Word wants to remember what used to be there before text shifted and won't show me what's really there unless I scroll away and back. 3. A colleague gives me a Word doc with mixed size text, I paste into my doc, and it goes all 12 point. I give them a doc with mixed text size and they get all 12 point when they open it. Ideas?

I run Word 2008 on Mac OSX 10.5.8. Something weird happens in only certain documents and only sometimes. I go to type, and the whole document goes grey - just the pages, not the menus or anything, but it obscures all text and document elements. If I just scroll away from that page and scroll back, I get fresh white background again, unless I didn't scroll all the way off of the visible area I was on - that band stays grey until I scroll it out of view and back. It only happens in certain documents and I'm not sure what the unique qualities of those documents are. About as complicated as I get in any Word document is a table, an image, or maybe some headings, and sometimes none of those are involved.

It seems to be related to another weird and more frequent minor problem that also goes away if I scroll. Sometimes I've changed something in a document, like say deleting a couple of sentences. Then I go to type something towards the bottom of the page and it comes out all jumbled. That's when I realize that what I was looking at on the screen was not actually what was supposed to be in that spot. Because in my fumblings and scrollings I then realize it was just remembering what used to be there and is showing me that, but really the removal of a sentence or whatever above there caused everything below it to move up. But not until I scroll away and back will Word let go of its past and show me what has actually shifted into that space now. So the jumble errors are caused by me trying to type into something that's not really there. Instead I type into what's actually there, but which I can't see until I mess it up. How can I get it to stop that?

Both of those are odd behaviors that plague me in certain documents. The grey page thing is semi-regular, but the phantom memory image thing happens in every document. I keep my OS and software up to date automatically, but this problem has been happening for a couple of years. When I research it, I mostly find problems about the grey screen of death or when the whole Word interface goes grey, not just the white pages. Haven't found my particular problem in the forums.

Bonus question: My colleagues and I collaborate on documents. Sometimes somebody will give me something that has text in different sizes and I can see that when I open it on my screen, but when I paste from their document into mine, it all goes 12pt. Likewise when I have stuff in mixed sizes and send it to one of them, they get all 12pt when they open it. They never see my other sizes. Any clues?
posted by Askr to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)
 
Response by poster: They grey screen thing just happened to me again. I was typing in a document and then right in the middle of a sentence everything goes grey except the line where I'm typing. Here's a screenshot.
posted by Askr at 9:02 AM on August 25, 2010


I can't speak to the font sizing but can you try scrolling and resizing windows (with lots of thumbnails) in iPhoto? If it's a 2008 MacBook Pro, it may have a common video card problem that's supposed to still be under an extended warranty.
posted by bonobothegreat at 9:18 AM on August 25, 2010


...I meant to add that when mine went bad, it had a lot of issues with text display/tearing during scrolling of text documents and also iPhoto window redraws.
posted by bonobothegreat at 9:20 AM on August 25, 2010


Response by poster: It is a 2008 MacBook Pro as a matter of fact. Actually it's possible it could be a late 2007 one. I'll check out that video card problem.

I opened iPhoto and was able to scroll and resize with no apparent errors or weird stuff.

The weird thing is that only certain documents do it. You'd think if it were a systemwide problem, it would happen to all documents.
posted by Askr at 10:11 AM on August 25, 2010


Well, it started off with weird text tearing for me and gradually got worse (though it was always intermittent and worst when using an airport while on battery power). Keep taking screen caps and consider bringing them to an Apple store. When I brought mine to them and showed them my screen caps, they just took it from me and returned it in 5 days with a new graphics card/logic board. Be aware that if you do get it fixed, you may need to reset your TimeMachine and reauthorize any software that requires your logic board's ID# to run.
posted by bonobothegreat at 1:28 PM on August 25, 2010


I'd recommend logging in as another user or creating another account and seeing if the problem replicates itself there. It'll tell you more about the why it is happening if it does or does not. Does not would indicate bad preferences files to me. Does would indicate a corrupted application.

The first thing I thought of when I read this was that you had a corrupted .dot template file that was basically over-writing any other changes you made.

In the meantime, you can use Google Docs, Open Office or even Pages to edit and write documents if you have to.
posted by fenriq at 9:36 PM on August 25, 2010


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