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AndrewB_33334's avatar
AndrewB_33334
Copper Contributor
Mar 02, 2021

Numbering and bullets in Word docs keep disappearing

When working as a team on Word files within SharePoint, I constantly have problems with things like heading numbering disappearing (or changing from numbers to bullets), bullets going missing or bull...
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Brochet30's avatar
Brochet30
Copper Contributor
Aug 18, 2022

cdarrow 

We have a number of client who are having lots of similar issues with co-authoring Word documents with the paragraph numbering disappearing. These documents are attached to a template with a button to Reset the styles which repairs the document. However it is now happening so frequently that Co-authoring is becoming unusable. The latest release of Office seems to be even worse!

AndrewB_33335's avatar
AndrewB_33335
Brass Contributor
Aug 18, 2022
One thing that's been suggested to me is that tracked changes and comments make it worse: I haven't been working on a project since I heard that so I haven't tried it out yet, but if you can it might be worth deleting all comments and tracking from a document that's causing you trouble and see if that improves things. Obviously comments are useful in a co-authoring environment so it's not a long-term solution, but a cause would be good to find.
  • KevinN2500's avatar
    KevinN2500
    Copper Contributor
    Oct 18, 2022

    AndrewB_33335 I have been encountering the same issue. We are using Sharepoint to allow multiple people to collaborate on Word documents with Tracked Changes on and using Comments as well. Sometimes the paragraph numbers/bullets disappear and other times they change to Asian characters. These problems are a bit random because not all of our Word files are getting corrupted in this manner and I haven't been able to identify a pattern that is contributing to the problem. I'm wondering if having multiple people making changes to the same file at the same time is part of the issue.  I haven't been able to find posts on other forums/sites describing this problem.

    • nikkipike's avatar
      nikkipike
      Copper Contributor
      Oct 18, 2022

      KevinN2500 @AndrewB_33335 

      This is a known issue with Microsoft and in theory they have resolved the issue in the latest release of MS Word (if I remember correctly 2209). The important thing is everyone who is co-authoring needs to be on the latest version, they need to use the full Desktop version of MS Word and they need to have Auto Save on.

      With this set up the problem has become less frequent but our clients are still getting issues with things changing in the document.

      Having a template attached to the document with the correct styles so they can quickly reset the styles has really helped our client work around this problem.

      • AnilK's avatar
        AnilK
        Copper Contributor
        Oct 24, 2022
        My company is experiencing co-authoring issues on a regular basis. We have some large documents with many collaborators who have issues with templates as well as paragraph numbering going awry (I wonder if they are 2 separate issues, as the paragraph problem can happen with a single user?). We are on ME 2208, which seems to have helped, but not eradicated the situation. A "Best Practice" guide, along with a deeper understanding of how co-authoring works under the hood would be a great help!

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