Problem with OfficeXP...

CycloniteCyclonite Tampa, Florida Icrontian
edited February 2004 in Science & Tech
I'm having trouble finding an answer to this problem because it's hard to explain to a search engine.

Anyway, I have a document that has already been typed up, and let's say I want to bold a certain paragraph. I will select that paragraph and then click the bold button. Word will then turn EVERYTHING in the document bold. If I hit undo, it removes the bold formatting from the rest of the document and only leaves the paragraph bold. The same thing hapens with bullets. If I select the paragraph to bullet, it bullets the entire document until I hit undo.

This isn't just on my computer. In fact, this isn't exacly my problem; it is someone else's in the office. I'm helping them out. Anyway, she can't get it to work, my boss can't get it to work, and I can't get it to work as we want. I think it's a dumb "feature" and Microsoft should be shot! Hah.

I'm hoping someone has come across this before and found a fix or a setting to change. Maybe you can point me in the right direction for what to search for as well. TIA!

Comments

  • kanezfankanezfan sunny south florida Icrontian
    edited February 2004
    i find that office (all versions) sometimes have weird bugs like this that are only cured with a re-install. I've never run into this problem, but if you're intent on not re-installing it, I'd suggest checking google groops (or usenet if you have access, same thing, google's is just readable without a news reader) for any office related problems, although a lot of times you see posts with similar problems as yours and no solution. i say try re-installing office first
  • TheBaronTheBaron Austin, TX
    edited February 2004
    i've come across that as well, i'd be interested to see what the fix is for it
  • godzilla525godzilla525 Western Pennsylvania Member
    edited February 2004
    Sounds like an Autoformat problem.... can't reproduce. :sawed:
    Go through and check all the settings if you haven't already. It sounds like it's trying to change the format of a particular type style globally in a completely incorrect and idiotic attempt to think for you.

    e.g. 1. Normal => Normal+Bold

    OTOH, I've had goofy problems with MSOffice that were only fixed by Using Corel WP8 instead. :cool2:
  • CycloniteCyclonite Tampa, Florida Icrontian
    edited February 2004
    OK. Fixed the issue shortly after posting. It was an issue with the normal style template. If, in Office XP, you click Format > Styles and Formatting. Then right click the normal style (or whatevr style is having the problem) and click modify. Uncheck Automatically update. That will stop it from happening. The next step is to just apply it to Normal.dot and all new documents should not have that "feature" anymore. Idiotic thing. If you need anymore info, feel free to post or PM.

    Also, thank yuo for the replies!
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited February 2004
    godzilla525 wrote:
    Sounds like an Autoformat problem.... can't reproduce. :sawed:
    Go through and check all the settings if you haven't already. It sounds like it's trying to change the format of a particular type style globally in a completely incorrect and idiotic attempt to think for you.

    e.g. 1. Normal => Normal+Bold

    OTOH, I've had goofy problems with MSOffice that were only fixed by Using Corel WP8 instead. :cool2:

    I tend to agree, though I use OpenOffice and WPOffice. The only Word I owned was Word 2.0, but have used lots of them(various versions) doing work for others or showing them how to do things in Word (on their computers).

    The way to stop this, without unchecking autoupdate, is to save a new style for your unique docs, not to let all of them default to normal all the time, or the changes you made in last new doc will be reflected in the normal.dot style if you in fact let all docs use normal.dot.

    Essentially, template by style as well as saving each doc if you use Word prior to the offcies that came out with the new .NET software that is in beta in part. Leave the stock normal.dot template alone-- decide if you are going to change things first, save the style to something NOT named normal if you are and do not want all docs after that to act like your heavily modded doc's base style. Word stores customns in whatever style is active, for things that you would save or specifiy in a css on websites. WP and OOo save these in files when you save file, not in a style sheet template that is then applied by deafult to all new docs afterward.

    The other thing you can do is to save a backup of normal.dot, copy to a file called normal.bak in same directory normal.dot sits in right after installation of Word, and copy normal.bak over normal.dot to get your old original as installed normal.dot back when you manage to forget to save each unique style in its own file, with word NOT running when you copy back.

    I decided I liked that idea less than saving css style specs in the data file(ala WPO), or in OOo's case, pairing the resulting style sheet and the data file in an archive and unarchiving it on open. You can unzip a OOo data file archive, the contents file inside is your pure data, the other one is a css file. All OO data "files" as average user would think of them are in fact archives with two files inside.

    John D.
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