This Super Glitch has happened twice now. The first time was yesterday, and it just happened again. I'm writing a short story, I'm 'saving' as I go, then, while I was working on the document (maybe I touched the mouse, but anyhow) the entire format just went completely berzerk! It's almost impossible to describe; it seems that it all just became this zoomed-out jumbled-up mess, and my text was no longer visible. It just became this glitched-out disaster, with no way of figuring out how to undo it (ctrl-z did not take it back). I have never seen this before, and in no way is this supposed to be happening. (I didn't take a screenshot of the corrupted version) So, I had to close the file, re-open it, and it was back to normal; but I lost all the work I was doing before the glitch turned the document into something useless. How can I fix this? Or stop this from ever happening again? Why is this happening? Thank you.

Sorry, you won't get any help. This is like calling your car mechanic and telling him/her that your car sounded weird yesterday for a while. You turned it off and then it was sounding fine. The mechanic, not having heard the sound and only having your description "weird" is not going to be able to guess what was going wrong.

Next time, at least take a screen shot.
This could have been hitting a very large zoom setting.
You could also use Shift+F12 (Save As) to save a copy.

Thank you Charles. Yes, next time I'll take a screenshot.

If it looked a little like the attached screen shot of mine, you aren't alone. This has happened to me a few times lately. I'm doing a normal document edit (someone else's document), and all of a sudden the screen looks like there are multiple layers of pages within pages. I quickly Saved As a new name, exited Word, and when I reopened it looked fine.

Word 365 here. I am suspecting it's either a recent Word/Office bug, or something's going on with my computer.

Attached Images

Screenshot 2022-01-05 151632.jpg (82.6 KB, 17 views)

This issue comes up from time to time. Switching to 64 bit Office (if you are running 32 bit Office under 64 bit Windows) is worth trying.

Beyond that, updating the video driver might help.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Yes, thank you (Kilroy), I believe this was the same glitch that has happened to me twice now during the last weeks. About what Stefan was saying (thanks), it's hard to say why this is suddenly happening. I have the same laptop as last year, and last year I typed and published a 300-page book, without ever once having any kind of glitch. So, now I'm saving way more often than usual, and having to do creative writing with the fear of the glitch always in the back of my mind. I'll update the video driver as Stefan says. Thanks

Thanks! I just tried the video driver, and it says I have the latest. I'll have to ask IT about whether 64-bit Office is plausible. I also suspect, though, that my having the oldest computer in the office might have something to do with it too.

I can't remember exactly when we switched to Office 365; seems like it was over a year ago. It seems like since August, Word in particular has been buggy for me, while Excel seems pretty constant.

So far this has only happened a few times to me, but I wanted to capture it because one other person in the office described something similar. He, like me, has one of the older computers.

Hope that helps. Saving often is always a good idea; you might also want to change your AutoRecover settings (in Option/Save) to fewer than the default 5 minutes.