Hi
I have a long 300 page Word 2013 document, in which the TOC has fieldcodes. I read somewhere that fieldcodes should update automatically when the file is opened. This didn´t seem to be the case in my document, so I tried Ctrl+A+F9 as I had seen recommended several places, also in Office Help.
Something strange then happened: the fieldcodes did update, but the whole document became marked and I could not remove this. I then saved and closed the document.
When I opened it again, all that was left of the 300 pages was 5 pages of footnotes, continously numbered (I had "pagenumbering" in the document).
Even more strange: the size of the document is still the same!!!



Can anyone enlighten me on this puzzle? And what is the trick to update all fieldcodes, if not Ctrl+A+F9?

Ctrl+A followed by F9 updates all field codes in the text layer of the document.
I hope you kept a backup.
When something like this happens, Ctrl+Z (undo) is your friend.

Thanks for answer, but when the command Ctrl+A+F9 is performed, one wouldn´t expect the total marking of the entire document to remain afterwards. How do you remove that marking, so you can get on with your work? Ctrl+Z would - I presume - take the fieldcodes back to where they were before updating, right?
And how does the deleting of the entire text occur - since I didn´t press any delete-key?

And yes - I did have a backup

Without looking at your document, I haven't a clue. I suspect that the text was contained in a field but there is no way to know.

And, it is Ctrl+A followed by F9, not all three together. I have no idea what all three together might do.

In all likelihood you had the Ctrl key down when you pressed F9. Having just pressed Ctrl-A, the result would be to embed the entire document in a field. The solution, if you've saved & closed the document, is to press Alt-F9 to expose the field code, then select & cut everything between the first & last field braces (i.e. { .... }) in the document, delete those field braces, then paste the content back into the document; otherwise Undo will revert the changes.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Thanks, I´ll try the suggested. As I remenber, I pressed all 3 keys simultaniously. But it´s a 2-step command, as I understand you. First Ctrl+A, break, and then F9, right?

You must let go of the Ctrl key before pressing F9 - there is nothing to prevent you continuing to hold it (and the A) down when pressing the F9. A nanosecond of finger trouble while updating can get you into this predicament.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]