Word 2016, autoformat - the text does not always reformat.

So I have word set up to review a block of text and most of those are sentences consisting of 4-5-6 lines of text or short phrases that I want to auto format to my wider page space.

The auto return is wider and the individual lines of text have hard returns at the end. these are RTF files.

What I am having problems with is, when I highlight the entire block of text and use autoformat and then click okay, sometimes the text will reformat (in review) but other times it will do nothing at all as if each line of text has some code blocking the autoformat from deleting the hard return at the end of the line.

It's almost like word sees the end of each line as the end of a sentence or paragraph, but there is no period there.

Is there any setting that will correct this?

I have tried all the check boxes under autoformat and nothing helps for those problem blocks of text.