WORD Formatting problem

MS WORD

I have a formatting issue that has been following me for a couple of years. MS Support never "understood" and I gave up. However, I found this forum and I am trying for a solution again.

In Word, Word 2000, 2002, XP - all. On Win98, WinMe, NT4.0, win2K and WinXP.

If I select a word , sentence or paragraph and change anything, the change affects the entire document (even headers & footers) BUT NOT THE TEXT SELECTED.

If I follow with a single undo, it corrects everything to the desired result and all is well until I change something else.

Characteristics:

1. the operation may be bolding, italicizing, font size chage, margin change, style change -- it doesn't matter. Then, when I apply a format change it is as if the selection is inverted -you can't see an inverted selection, of course , but the behavior is as if the were inverted. If you follow with UNDO, the action of UNDO is weird in that it re-inverts everything (this is not the same as UNDO again) and gives the originally desired change.

2. it sometimes doesn't happen

3. it has followed me over different computers, different OS's, different MS OFFICE releases.

4. If it is a virus, I can't find anything to detect it, I can't find anything describing it. I have the latest Norton AV, also Spysweeper. Spybot, Pest Patrol.

Has anyone EVER seen this besides me?

Anyone know of a fix?

Thanks

 

Not *exactly* as you describe, no, but I think I know what you're talking about.

Word troubleshooting: www.theofficeexperts.com/word.htm
Primarily renaming normal.dot ought to help.

Also, use Dreamboat's recommended settings on that same page.
Also, go into Format-Style and make sure "automatically update" is NOT turned on.

 

Thanks.

I tried all tyhis to no avail.

I was sure the normal.dot would help!!!