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Hi!
Q.I wonder if anyone else had these two (+) problems with the Windows Office 365 MS Office 2016 update -specifically in MS Word?
[And] if so, are there any fixes?
Situation:
I updated my subscription of Office 365 Windows two days after it came out. I have experienced two display problems in MS Word that have repeated in different documents -newly created and when editing older documents:
Problems:
(1) In MS Word, the cursor frequently seems to display one character position *ahead* of the actual input position.
Details -I have noticed it in typing for about a hour or so. The actual position is unchanged, but the display position is ahead by one character. This is noticeable in editing already-typed text. The display is zoomed from between 110%-120% when this occurs. It feels more "graphic" like older versions of word processors when they first started displaying WSWYG style. I use left justification, but the feel of typing --the way the characters align and realign while typing is similar to what occurs when typing using full justification (isn't set on that, and the alignment is left).
(2) When typing and editing in a document, some non-focus lines of a paragraph displayed on the screen are often displayed in corrupted characters. When I click on that line it rewrites correctly; but that display issue is new to this version and problematic.
(3) This version crashed once while spell checking a moderate-sized (five page) document. I never had MS Word in Office 365 crash during an operation over the course of the past year.
Equipment:
A combined pix of three screen shots illustrates what I experienced.
Thanks in advance for any advice or assistance!
Mark
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
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.
This issue has been fixed, and now appears in the latest build of Office.
As usual, if you haven’t received the update yet, open an Office app and click File > Account > Update > Update Now.
Thanks very much for your patience.
-Erik
Did you have Office 365/2013 before getting 365/2016?
Here are some techniques you can try to get the previous version.
Roll Back 2016 to 2013 manually by USER! DownGrade - Down Grade - Back out
How do I use the Office 365/2016 offline installer? Downgrade to Office 2013
https://support.office.com/en-US/article/How-do-I-reinstall-Office-2013-after-an-Office-2016-upgrade-a6ca92f4-cbb4-4609-9fdb-f8d3dd6812f3 How do I reinstall Office 2013 after an Office 2016 upgrade?
http://new.office-watch.com/2015/switch-from-office-2013-to-office-2016-the-real-story/ Switch from Office 2013 to Office 2016 – the real story (Office Watch)
If you need to install Office 2016 without an active Internet connection, or if you're having problems with slow speed or tenuous connections, you can download the offline installer file and then install Office 2016 at your convenience. Go to the Wiki link above for instructions with pictures
Start on the On the My Account page, choose Install.
Choose Language and install options.
Choose Additional install options.
Choose Download offline installer.
After you see a prompt to open or save the offline installer file, choose your preferred option.
If you choose Open, the file will download. Once the download is complete, you'll see a new virtual drive D that contains the Office installation files.
Note If you already have another drive labeled D, Office will create a virtual drive with the next available letter.
If you choose Save, you can specify where you'd like the image (.IMG) file to be saved. For example, you can save it to your desktop or to a USB drive. On Windows 10 and Windows 8 machines, you can open the file directly. If you use Windows 7, you'll need to copy the image file to a disc before you can open the file and continue to step 6.
Launch setup.exe to begin the offline installation. When you see the message, You're all set, you can now access your Office applications.
The first time you run one of your Office applications, you'll receive a prompt asking you to enter your product key to activate the product. Since you already have a Microsoft account that's associated with Office, choose Sign in with an active account instead.
Enter your email address, and then choose Next.
Note Make sure the email address and Microsoft account you use is the same one you used previously.
Enter the email address and password associated with your Microsoft account, and then choose Sign in to start using Office.
For more information about installing Office, see Download and install Office 365 Home, Personal, or University on your PC.
Looking for help with a one-time purchase of Office 2013 or Office 2016? Associated with email Account - Offline Installer
Download the install files for a one-time purchase of Office 2013 or Office 2016
Download the install files for a one-time purchase of Office 2013 or Office 2016
Looking for Office 365 help?: How do I use the Office 2016 offline installer for Office 365?
If you made a one-time purchase of Office 2013 or Office 2016 (not a subscription to Office 365), you can download the install files directly to your computer.
Important Downloading the install files can take quite a while. Please be sure your computer stays powered on and connected to the Internet while downloading.
Sign in to your My Account page.
Choose Install from a disc.
Choose I want to burn a disc, and then choose Download.
Save the installation file to your computer and then run it to install Office.
Applies To: Office 2013, Office 2016
Hi @Rohn
You have done a lot of research on this! I am very grateful to you for sharing this content!
--The cursor problem not only induces typos, but it forces me to refocus my attention on the MS Word program and not my content. Concentration is important if am to use the product to produce an effective document.
Thank you again, truly -for this rich examination of the Microsoft Office/Word Display problems in the new versions.
I would ask others to please share their ideas and recommendations, too! :-)
@Rohn --have a great weekend!
Mark
This is the first time I've heard of this specific error. Others have reported blurry font problems with Win 8 and Win 10 in Word. It is not surprising to me that your problem appears in outlook also. Since 2010 (I think) Outlook has used Word as its text editor. So a problem in Word 2013 or 2016 would most likely also appear in Outlook. Word 2013 introduced a new "graphics" engine that controls how Word is displayed on screen. In the end, I strongly believe that the problem will turn out to be a bad interaction between Word and the video driver/card.
Please each report your Windows version, video card model, and video driver name and number. Lets see if we can find a common cause for this problem
People have reported a couple of fixes that have worked for "Blurry" font. Maybe one of them will also help with this issue. Note, there are a couple of ways of turning off hardware acceleration, so make sure you try all combinations.
Word Black in VMWare
VMWare 10 only supports Direct X 9, Word 2013 needs Direct X 10. The fix is to turn off Hardware Graphics Acceleration
Screen Display Blurry – Blurred – Fuzzy
Office 2010 respected the RGB font anti-aliasing as set by the Windows OS, so fonts were always clear in Word documents, Outlook emails etc.
Office 2013 ignores the Windows system font settings completely and belligerently imposes inferior grey-scale font anti-aliasing in document windows etc.
There are many many forums about this and no amount of tweaking, changing hardware, changing drivers nor even clean installing Windows makes the slightest difference.
The broken font rendering API used by Office 2013 and IE11 needs to be fixed.
Disable Hardware Graphics Acceleration
http://www.askvg.com/fix-bold-blurry-or-hard-to-read-font-problem-in-windows-8-1/
Turn off High Contrast on Win8 release preview and check the results. To turn off the high contrast, try the below steps:
o Press Windows Key +R, type in Control Panel and click OK.
O Click on Ease of Access, Ease of Access Center, and then click on Make the computer easier to see.
O Uncheck all the options under “High contrast” and click on OK.
You may also disable hardware graphic acceleration and check.
Yoga 13: Blurry text on Win 8 & Win 8.1****
Fix: Blurry Fonts or Poor Display Scaling In Office 2013 Programs
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/blurry-fonts-poor-display-scaling-office-2013
How to Make the Windows Desktop Work Well on High-DPI Displays and Fix Blurry Fonts on win 8.1
\[Fix\] Bold, Blurry or Hard to Read Font Problem in Windows 8.1
http://www.askvg.com/fix-bold-blurry-or-hard-to-read-font-problem-in-windows-8-1/
Fix Blury Font
<snip>
I needed to disable display scaling on high DPI settings.
Normally, this would be very simple. You just:
Presto ackgr, problem solved. However, PPT15 is a 64-bit application, which means that these checkboxes are grayed out and cannot be changed from this UI.
The only solution I found was to edit the registry manually (caution: this is generally a very dangerous thing to do, so be very careful with this)
If your problem was scaling on high DPI displays, the problem should be solved.
To confirm that you edited the registry correctly, follow the first set of directions above to view the compatibility settings of PowerPoint in the UI. The checkbox will still be grayed out, but it will now be checked.
</snip>
<snip>
Finally I’ve found the solution... (it’s not perfect though... but now I am using Office 2013).
Link: http://www.tenforums.com/general-discussion/11079-fix-windows-10-blurry-text-windows.html#post331965
What to do:
“After you apply your desired font size in windows settings (like 125% dpi, I use this with 125%) > Open notepad, paste this into it:
Code:
REG ADD “HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop” /v DpiScalingVer /t REG_DWORD /d 0x00001018 /f
REG ADD “HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop” /v Win8DpiScaling /t REG_DWORD /d 0x00000001 /f
REG ADD “HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop” /v LogPixels /t REG_DWORD /d 0x00000078 /f
then save it as <yourname>.cmd somewhere on your HDD > open local ground policy editor (gpedit.msc from search bar) > In user config (im translating this from my language so there might be little translation differences) > go to Windows Settings > Scripts (login/logout) > In the window on the right double click on Login to open it (because we want this to be applied every time you login) > in Scripts tab, select Add > then in new window select Browser > navigate to where you saved your cmd file and select it > then just press Ok > Apply > Ok > Then sign out/reboot your pc > Login to your account for the first time after adding this script so it will be applied > then if it will not work, Sign out/reboot again and from now on it should work every time (works for me).
I noticed that fonts are much more crystal clear everywhere now, it seems MS messed up badly with dpi in windows 10... In some places font is only 5~10% blurry (right mouse click menu, display settings etc.) while in others (device manager for example) is 100% blurry. After this I have crystal clear fonts everywhere :3”
</snip>
November 18, 2013 ‘Blurry fonts’ bug KB 2670838 persists with IE11 and Windows 7
Another fix disable Scaling on High DPI settings
PPT 2013 Poor Scaling (Fuzzy/Blurry) on High-Res Display
Blurriness or distortion on newer NVIDIA graphics cards
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/office-2013-known-issues-HA102919019.aspx
If you turn on the Manage 3D Setting on AntiAliasing – FXAA option for newer NVIDIA cards, you’ll see distortion or blurriness. This option is off by default because the option states “enabling this setting global may affect all programs rendered on the GPU, including video players and the Windows desktop.”
Workaround NVIDIA has released a newer driver that you can download from the NVIDIA website.
Or since the above setting is global, you can click the Program Settings tab of the Manage 3D Settings and customize your Office programs to turn the global setting for Antialiasing – FXAA to off. By default, the Use Global Setting is the setting and will take whatever is set globally.
Turning off hardware acceleration also fixes the issue but we don’t recommend doing this.
NVIDIA App
When you install GeForce Experience from NVIDIA, you will be notified about updates as well and allows you to update the driver from within the application; http://www.geforce.com/geforce-experience
Blurriness or distortion on newer ATI cards
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/office-2013-known-issues-HA102919019.aspx
If you turn on the Morphological filtering option on the Gaming tab, you’ll see distortion or blurriness. This option is off by default.
Workaround AMD will be releasing a driver that will fix this issue. Or you can turn this option off. Or create an Application profile with this option turned off in the Application profiles group box at the top by pressing Save and pointing to the Office program executable (with the Morphological filtering option off).
Turning off hardware acceleration also fixes the issue but we don’t recommend doing this.
Win 8 Enable ClearType Optimization
http://www.insideris.com/windows-8-tips-enable-cleartype-optimization/
Explanation
Optional Reading
Office 2013 Adopts New Windows Display Technology
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/murrays/archive/2012/07/29/office-adopts-new-windows-display-technology.aspx
Why / What Happened to Office 2013?
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/murrays/archive/2012/07/29/office-adopts-new-windows-display-technology.aspx
<snip>
“Office 2013 has undergone a substantial shift to a relatively new display facility, Direct2D, and a new text facility, DirectWrite. These are the display facilities that are used on Windows Phone 8, the new Windows RT slates, and optionally on Windows 7 & 8. Up through Office 2010, the Windows Graphics Device Interface (GDI) and complex script support by Uniscribe were used.”
</snip>
**why the fonts in word 2013 are blurry?**
http://answers.microsoft.com/thread/1d811744-2b48-44df-a20f-ed97c651b239
Disabling 'use smart cursoring' did nothing for me either.
Out of curiosity, is everyone running Windows 10? I was already on Win 10 and did not have the problem until I upgraded Office, but I'm wondering if it's an issue that surfaces from the combination of Office 2016 on Windows 10...?