My company installed Office 2010 in May, and I have been havng numerous corruption problems since then -- with almost every document I work on (I'm an editor). A fellow editor is havng the same problems - according to her with every document she touches. Most of our documents were created in 97-2003 format with Word 2007, because our customer has only recently installed Word 2007.




Here are some examples:

1. Word adds paragraph markers to documents, primarily in headers ad footers, but new today, it added them to a cover page-- header (10 markers) below the title (7) in the footer (9). The headers and footers all contain extra paragraphs - of varying number. (Screen shot attached.)
2. The styles list is the most frequent source of corruption. I discovered this problem when I couldn't find the built-in Body Text style. When I looked at the styles list, it was a jumble. (Screen shots attached of correct list and Word's variations.) I further discovered when looking at Recommended styles, the reason the styles were a jumble was that the numerical pre-fix or the styles had changed, and Body Text was at the very bottom.
3. Another time, I opened a document with tables and found a bizarre Z character through the table (screen shot attached). Have only seen this once.
4. Other problems include: Numbers in lists (List Number 1) changing their sequence (1, 8, 9, 2) and could not change them with Continue Numbering. Next to last bullet in a list losing its bullet -- unable to correct even with inserting a new line and pasting in the text. The following bullet item lost its bullet. Cross-references to captions not appearing in the cross-reference dialog, even though all tracked changes had been accepted.

Yesterday I spent 2.5 hours on a 24-page document after converting it to an RTF format (twice!), and today I have already spent another 5 hours on it because of the paragraph marker problem. I decided to paste it into a fresh template (dotx), do all the reformatting, etc. Then the paragraph-marker fairy struck again!

Is there any remedy to these problems? Any idea of what's causing them? I am being reminded of Word 97 and its issues.

Attached Images

	Correct Styles List.jpg (25.8 KB, 8 views)
	Bad Styles List Sample 1.JPG (26.7 KB, 8 views)
	Footer - paragraph markers.JPG (30.9 KB, 7 views)
	Bad Styles List Sample 2.JPG (26.7 KB, 7 views)
	Word Table Problem.JPG (87.9 KB, 8 views)

1. Excessive paragraph marks added when you insert Building Blocks is a known issue. The workaround is to delete these (as I'm sure you already know).

2. Based on your description, I don't think this is corruption. You can choose how to sort entries of the Styles pane. Click the Options link and choose to sort entries alphabetically. While you are in the Style Pane Options dialog box, be sure to clear the options under "Select formatting to show as styles"; this will reduce the clutter and make sure that only actual styles are in the list. Use the "New documents based on this template" option to transfer the selections of the dialog box to new documents.

3. This looks like diagonal borders. Select the table. On the Home tab, click the arrow on the border & shading button (the last button in the Paragraph group) and select Borders and Shading on the context menu. Make sure that "Apply to" says "Table" and click to deselect the vertical border options. When you are done, click OK.

4. For Word numbering to behave, you must set it up very carefully. See http://www.shaunakelly.com/uncategor...numbering.html and http://www.shaunakelly.com/uncategor...olbullets.html. (Note that the links that are specific for Word 2007 and later are not working when I post this message.)

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Here is an archival version
Archive How to create numbered headings or outline numbering in Word 2007 and Word 2010

http://web.archive.org/web/201102030...s20072010.html

For any page on Shauna Kelly's site if you precede the URL with:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110203081352/
it will direct to the archival page. The internal links seem to work, but slowly.