Large Word Document spontaneously gains pages or loses words.

Anonymous
2018-03-02T21:38:27+00:00

When I transfered a large Word 2010 Doc to my new computer (into Word 2016) from the cloud, 1500 words disappeared. Nobody could figure out why or which words were missing.

Now that same file (Word 2016) has spontaneously added 10 pages (it went from 469 to 479 pages), but there are no blank pages and the page format and word count haven't changed. Can anyone tell me what could have happened?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-03-03T04:00:59+00:00

    Doug,

    Thank you for explaining how it might have been possible for the word count to change without actually losing the 1500 words. 

    Could you also explain how/why 10 additional pages suddenly appeared after I had already been working with this file on the new computer for several months?

    Did MS send out some weird update that could have affected this file but not any others?

    Thank you.

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  2. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2018-03-03T06:57:55+00:00

    See my previous response.  You are using a different computer with a different version of Word.

    If you think it is something else, what is on the 10 "additional pages"?

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-03-03T08:37:36+00:00

    Sorry if I wasn't clear. Let me restate the second issue:

    I have been editing the same file on the same computer for several months. The file had been 469 page for a month. Then one day I opened the file it had 479 pages.

    Why is there 10 more pages if the word count remained the same? In other words, I didn't add 10 pages worth of words and didn't change the format or the computer. There are no blank areas on any of the pages.

    Thank you.

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  4. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2018-03-03T12:24:00+00:00

    What is on the 10 additional pages?

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  5. Suzanne S Barnhill 279.4K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2018-03-03T16:15:17+00:00

    If you examine the document page by page, you'll probably see page breaks in different places. If you have inserted any manual page breaks, this effect will be magnified, but even just line breaks in different places can add up in a document of that length. See http://wordfaqs.ssbarnhill.com/TextReflow.htm

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