Word 2016 Paragraph Indent Problems

Anonymous

I've been experiencing a problem in Word documents since the upgrade to '16 a few weeks ago. My paragraphs keep randomly un-indenting, or indenting double. I'll fix all the problems, save the document and next time I open it, there's random indent again. Sometimes it's the same place, sometimes it is in a different location. Sometimes it even happens while I'm working in an open document! I've tried taking out all the formatting and starting over, I've tried resetting the paragraph parameters...nothing seems to help.

Any ideas on a fix? This problem is not only distracting, but also very frustrating because I'm not getting any real work done! It's driving me nuts!

Thanks for any help or suggestions. Appreciate it!

Beth

UPDATE 1/14: I received a reply from Doug after I sent my diagnostic file to be reviewed by a Microsoft team:

I have received information from the Word Product Team that they have identified the cause of the issue and are presently validating a fix for it.

In the meantime, it appears that toggling the display of “non-printing” characters by the use of the Show\Hide (¶) button on the home tab of the ribbon, causes the screen to be re-painted which will cause the indents to re-appear. However, the issue *will* return again following subsequent edits, so it will be necessary to toggle the show\hide every now and then.

Apparently, it is a display only issue and printing should produce the document laid out correctly with the indents in place.

So at least we know now what the issue is, hopefully a fix will not take that long. I see down the thread that Justin has reverted to '13 with no major issues, so that could be a good solution for those of you in need of proper paragraphs yesterday. Thanks to everyone for their help and suggestions and best of luck!

Beth

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

Hi everyone. We just released a new update that should resolve the following formatting/selection issues:

Sections that should be indented, are not indented
Tabs no longer display correctly
Strange pieces of characters are left on the screen
Selection range is incorrect, (Word doesn't select the text you choose)
Bullet and Number Lists don't display correctly

For more information, see: FIXED 1/26/16: Word 2016 doesn't display your document formatting correctly when you edit a document in progress.

Please try it out and let us know if you run into any trouble.

Thank you.

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Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

Yes, these all sound like part and parcel of the same bug. The symptoms are:

Sections that should be indented, are not indented
Tabs no longer display correctly
Strange pieces of characters are left on the screen (i.e., the screen painting issue)
Selection range is incorrect, (Word doesn't select the text you choose)
Bullet and Number Lists don't display correctly

The good news is that the fix for the bug has already gone out to our Office Insider audience, which means that it should roll out to the rest of you soon. Here's a bit more info about how the Office 365 updates work: How do I get the newest features in Office 2016 for Office 365?

I also want to take a moment to say that we appreciate each of you reporting your issues and working with us to resolve these bugs. We are listening closely.

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57 additional answers

Stefan Blom 352.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2016-01-11T11:46:39+00:00

It has been suggested that this is a display driver issue with affected computers. Until the issue has been fixed, note that you can share the document with your editor in PDF format (you can send the Word document too if necessary).
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Anonymous

2016-01-11T11:58:02+00:00

I've tried the various fixes associated with the display driver and it makes no difference. I'm getting the same problem on my other laptop which is a totally different make. As to creating a PDF, my document becomes a proofing doc, so that's a non-starter, I'm afraid. Do you know if Microsoft are working on a fix for this?
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Stefan Blom 352.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2016-01-11T12:10:33+00:00

Do the two computers that you have tested have something in common, such as using the same display driver? Based on the reports in this forum, the issue is with a Nvidia driver. Microsoft would most likely refer you to Nvidia, unless it can be proven that the issue affects more systems.

Note that recent versions of Word can edit PDFs, assuming that you convert it to PDF (a scanned PDF won't be editable in Word unless you first run optical character recognition software), so it may very well work for your editor.
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