Forum Discussion

jppatterson's avatar
jppatterson
Copper Contributor
Aug 14, 2025

Text Boxes Have Been Acting Weird Recently

I have a user who has been using text boxes in Word for many years.  Today she showed me that when she types in one text box, the text affects another text box.  On top of that, sometimes when she ty...
YarrowSterling's avatar
YarrowSterling
Iron Contributor
Sep 08, 2025

This is a known, odd bug in Word, often caused by graphics driver conflicts or a corrupt temporary file.

Quick fix: Go to File > Options > Advanced and check the box for "Disable hardware graphics acceleration." Restart Word. This usually stops the text replication immediately.

If that fails, try repairing Office or deleting Word's normal.dotm template.

 

  • S_K's avatar
    S_K
    Copper Contributor
    Sep 08, 2025

    Thank you for the reply. Unfortunately on a Mac (Office 365), I do not have access to Advanced options including "Disable hardware graphics acceleration." I have however deleted and reinstalled word and I have also deleted Word's normal.dotm template. None of these have resolved the issue unfortunately. 

    The only way I have managed to work is to toggle the size of the textbox/show formatting marks after every character I type in a textbox, which is crazy.