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

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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

Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2016-01-14T03:37:48+00:00

You can send a document to me and I will see what happens with it in both 2013 and 2016.

I understand that toggling the display of non printing characters by clicking on the Show\Hide button (¶) on the Home tab of the ribbon, which causes the screen to be "re-painted" has the effect of restoring the indents and I also understand that the indents are dealt with correctly when the document is printed.
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Anonymous

2016-01-14T03:29:15+00:00

I have the same issue and I have Intel graphic drivers. I'm also am a writer and the problem, at least for me, still appears on shorter documents (saving individual chapters did not solve the problem). The only solution I found was to set the indention to "none" in the paragraph tab and manually use the tab key/function.

Unfortunately, standard manuscript format for what I do entails automatic paragraph indenting. In any event, I'm dealing now with several documents that are hundreds of pages each. I don't relish going through and changing everything. While I could do find and replace for paragraphs, all my chapter titles and section breaks would need to be manually fixed because they'd no longer be centered. All this work to put something in the wrong format? To be changed back once Microsoft fixes this--and they will have to, sooner or later?. This is a major, major problem.

Has anyone tried sending a W2016 file to someone with an earlier version and seen if it's still screwy? I might experiment with doing that or saving to an earlier version of Word and seeing what happens to all the formatting.

I suppose I can try converting back to W2013. But before I do so, I'd like someone's confirmation the process actually solves the problem with files now saved to W2016 and doesn't create new formatting issues.
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Anonymous

2016-01-14T01:09:57+00:00

I have the same issue and I have Intel graphic drivers. I'm also am a writer and the problem, at least for me, still appears on shorter documents (saving individual chapters did not solve the problem). The only solution I found was to set the indention to "none" in the paragraph tab and manually use the tab key/function.
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