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Twice now I've had my work on a long document suddenly change to gibberish. This happens before my eyes when I am not typing. It gradually takes over the whole workspace. Luckily I have my Autosave set to 2 minutes so I can get my work back.
This has happened only on this computer, with this software. I've used Word for 25 years and it has always been fine till now.
I am using a Desktop PC (Dell 8940). I bought the software and the computer in October 2020.
I am saving my work to a folder on Dropbox.
Here's a screenshot I uploaded and approved, but I can't see it:
![154077-2021-12-01-word-2019-gibberish.jpg][1]
Hi @Frederica Mathewes-Green ,
Could you please upload the screenshot again?
Please do not delete any characters in the post after uploading the picture.
Is it only this long document that will have garbled characters or will all documents encounter this issue?
If only this document encounters this problem, this does not rule out document damage.
I suggest you back up this file, and then perform Open and Repair for this file.
When there are garbled characters, you can try to copy some content to a blank document, but only save the text without preserving the format for a test.
Besides, please checkout this article "How to troubleshoot damaged documents in Word".
Has the document been saved in DropBox before？
It is recommended to save your files to other locations for a test.
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I don't know why I could never get the image to upload. I will try again here.
I suspected the problem is with Dropbox--it has caused problems with Quicken before. I moved all my Quicken files out of Dropbox, and now I have moved my Word files as well.
It was a strange thing to watch. It was like the document was decaying before my eyes. I had been working on a document for some time with no problems, and then it suddenly didn't respond to the keyboard, or the mouse. I began seeing various segments of the screen beginning to fall over elements of the screen, as if they were translucent. The letters of the document became garbled, with big white spaces between. Another Word document open on the desktop also began showing those effects.
Fortunately Autosave had saved both documents recently, so I didn't lose anything permanently.
Has anyone ever had soemthing like this to happen before?
I'll try again to upload the image. OK, it says it was accepted. I don't see it here, though, only its name on my desktop. It's a jpg.
It worked!
DropBox is not a supported location for editing Office files. You will corrupt your files, as you've discovered. OneDrive is a better bet, as it is engineered to work with Office. Or edit your files on your local hard disk, then upload to DropBox for storage and file transfer only.
A fragmented display can usually be fixed if you uninstall 32 bit Office and replace it with 64 bit Office. Of course, this is only possible if you are running 64 bit Windows.
See if you are in fact running 32 bit Office by clicking File > Account > About Word.
I'm sorry, but I can't seem to find that information. Under File > Options there is no >About Word.
I bought this package, below, and the box doesn't say anything about whether it is 32 or 64 (my PC is 64).
Sorry, my previous message contained a typo, which I have now corrected. Version information is found at File > Account, with details at File > Account > About Word.
Since you appear to have isolated the issue to specific documents edited in Dropbox, the version information isn't relevant, after all. :-)
Thanks, I do see it now. It says 64 bit, so that wasn't the cause. Hopefully now that I have it out of Dropbox it won't happen again. It only happened twice, the other time last summer.
Thanks for all you r help.
Yes, I can see that might be what caused it. It happened one other time, too.
Thanks for your help. It was very strange to watch that happening.