Text disappears or distorted while typing on Outlook (Office 365)

Anonymous
2022-10-24T21:26:05+00:00

This has been an issue for a while. I'm using Outlook as part of Office 365 on my desktop, Dell XPS 8950. While writing an email, all of sudden, text disappears or gets distorted (e.g., some part of the text is shown and the other part is not). After scrolling up and down the mouse wheel, it usually returns to normal.

I've searched for a solution and found almost all suggested solutions say that I need to disable "overtype mode" as below. However, both options were already unchecked but the issue does not go away.

Text disappears as I type (microsoft.com)

TYPED TEXT DISAPPEARING BEFORE MY EYES ALL THE TIME WHILE TYPING EMAIL - Microsoft Community

If you know other causes or solutions, please let me know. This is really annoying and refuses to go away. If standalone Outlook (e.g., Office 2021) does not have this issue, please let me know. Thanks.

Outlook | Windows | Classic Outlook for Windows | For home

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-08-27T16:52:29+00:00

    There are so many things that I found could cause this and I went from glitching letters to a slightly different problem with just delays seen in typing for a long time. It was only in outlook though. Well, I finally found the problem today so I thought I would add my two cents. It was related to a windows graphic setting:

    1. Go to display settings
    2. Graphic settings
    3. Look at Graphic Performance Preference

    In my case, I had OUTLOOK and one other app listed. Under Outlook, it was set to use the intel graphics on my motherboard instead of my Nvidia RTX 4070 TI. The actual setting was "power saving". Other options are "let windows decide" or to force it to use my RTX 4070TI. I changed it to use the graphics card and the problem went away. Then I just deleted the setting completely along with one other app that was there (some old media player that was set to "let windows decide".

    How it got added? I'm not sure, but I'm guessing I had Outlook open and uninstalled / reinstalled video drivers at some point so perhaps Windows added that app on its own to the list.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-09-16T00:51:45+00:00

    The repair offered AlexChen is the same old copy-paste I keep seeing on these forums, which solves nothing in 80% of cases -- including this one.

    Outlook calendar losing focus while typing an appointment is an ancient issue (I've had this problem since at least as far back as Outlook 2013), and unfortunately have no fix (hence found myself joining this thread).

    Hopefully someone who cares and can do something at MS will read this...

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-09-16T00:52:54+00:00

    Ongoing since Outlook 2013... ;-/

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-11-07T14:48:47+00:00

    I couldn't see the text at all.

    I highlighted it and went to "fonts" and clicked through them until I found one that appeared and stayed. Not a long-term solution, but works to get the email you're working on out.

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