Forum Discussion
Formatting Changes after Uploading a Word Document with Images
I have been using Teams to hold virtual office hours with my students in my Business and in my Technical Writing Class. This has been working when the documents are simple and straight text. However, my student uploaded a document with images, and when I opened this in teams and then in Word Online, I could tell that the formatting is askew: the Pictures are out of place. Then I opened the document in Word and the formatting is correct. I've had this problem before with the Online MS apps. Why can't Teams and Word OnLine maintain the formatting of such documents?
Hello mhnicholas you can read this https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Differences-between-using-a-document-in-the-browser-and-in-Word-3E863CE3-E82C-4211-8F97-5B33C36C55F8 to understand the difference between Word Online in teams and Word.
Hi mhnicholas ,
Its just a limitation of Word Online. There are certain things that just don't format correctly and there is also a functionality deficiency in Online as per the previous posted link. I assume with images it is to do with the layout and the conversion between a word document and HTML.
This issue is something I usually make users aware of as part of training.
Andy
Andrew Hodges so what you are telling me is that if any of our users actually touch the doc while it is in Sharepoint it gets totally screwed up. I always tell them to go to the application, but once the formatting gets messed up, it stays messed up.
mhnicholas I know this is two years too late, but I was having the same issue and have had some success with controlling formatting using tables. The Teams version of Word does not allow images to be Square Wrapped. Using tables to place images in positions alongside text holds them in place and retains the layout.
This does not, however, get MS off the hook. MS Teams viewer should not be messing up MS Word documents, and require submission as a PDF to solve.
- But if you upload to Teams as a PDF you cannot use the review features in word, right?
mhnicholas Correct. If you load up a PDF you lose all editing facilities. The bug bear in Word appears to be images and Text Wrapping. As long as you use tables to place images in a Word doc rather than text wrapping, they will hold their shape when you upload as Word.
mhnicholastry installing the MS OFFICE chrome extension and then sign in, after opening the extension,
the formatting issue will disappear.
Worked for me!!This does not work. The MS OFFICE extension in chrome does NOT fix the formatting integration problems. It only allows simple cut, copy, paste functions to work properly. There are numerous formatting errors in documents created offline then opened in MS WORD online. This is a huge problem for WORD users and I'm astonished that Microsoft would allow this problem with document formatting to persist. I am inclined to begin converting my documents to Google Docs just to streamline my processes.
Glad that I am not the only one who has experienced this. This fault is still not fixed by Microsoft.
I have found that formatting of heading levels have changed when uploading, using, and downloading Word documents when stored in Teams. It is not related to the browser as I always open document in App, not on the browser. Doesn't happen all the time but often enough and very frustrating to have to change and correct again. mhnicholas
