Random Insertions/Deletions In Word Document

I am so very glad (in a selfish sort of way, I'm afraid) to hear that I'm not going crazy. How does one go about making this problem known to those that can address it?

In another thread, I noted that I had received a document for editing this past week that also had these random insertions. Perhaps those occurred while the creator of the content was using Track Changes, but I wouldn't think so, as I am the editor and should be the only one tracking changes.

Thank you, friends, for replying.

For clarification, my problem seems identical to Moray's. Perhaps relatedly, Word will get really slow in responding to my changes (i.e., I'll hit backspace to remove a character or two, then try to type a replacement character, and I have to wait several seconds for the program to respond. Moray's mention of fatigue made me think of this problem, and I wonder if it's all tied together.

I've been seeing behaviour like this since January 2022, on occasions. I have half a dozen documents, 100 pages long up to 1700, and each new version has change tracking turned on just for content changes -- that is, I turn it on and off as I work. (Once the document has been shared, I clear all the changes and start fresh.) Word seems to reach a fatigue point and then acts as though it has Tourette's, inserting a character string in odd places like in the middle of other words. Sometimes it changes 'XML' to something else, consistently over a number of pages. Sometimes it inserts plain characters, like a short word from the text, into a Word cross-reference, which of course no longer works.

If I notice the behaviour quickly, I can either quit without saving, or use Review > Find next to find and undo the spurious changes.

I keep multiple copies of everything so it's never wasted too much time, but it is annoying and puzzling.

When I've closed and reopened the document, providing all the weird inserts have gone, Word behaves properly again.

Unfortunately not possible for me to show any examples -- all confidential, and I don't know how to make this occur in a spare document. I think it needs a long history of versions and tracked changes.

At least, good to know I'm not the only one affected.

I do see multiple versions. However, the crazy edits all appeared at once, and I worked the rest of the day after that. I couldn't think of a way to get rid of the unwanted edits (it would be great to have a "delete all edits within a certain timeframe" option) without losing all the edits I had done after they appeared. I often work "sideways" through the document, going back and forth through the document to work on similar edits as a group.

[Note: I'm updating a post I made 6/15/22 that probably wasn't very clear.]

I am editing a long (nearly 500 page) document in Word, using Track Changes. A few days ago, I noticed hundreds (literally) of random edits of the document, all showing as having occurred at 12:09 PM on 6/15/2022. Most of these involved deleting part of a word and adding a random block of gibberish (though the gibberish often included the page number and the same repeated characters that looked like portions of the word "material" or similar). Other edits that appeared involved a pattern of changing the indents on a group of block quotes. Whenever this occurred, there would always also be a word in the sentence preceding the block text that had the middle portion of the word removed.

I am using Microsoft 365, and the document AutoSaves and, I guess (I don't really know how this works) regularly uploads to One Drive. No other users have access to the document. I am the only one doing any edits to it.

Any thoughts on what happened? I've just spent hours going through the document to remove the unwanted edits, and I don't want it to happen again.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts.

First. Save your document under a different name using Save As.

Second, create a copy you can work with.

See if you can recover any deleted / overwritten text by rejecting recent changes.

Which version of Word are you using?

File > Account > About Word

The addition of random text is not a function of Track Changes. Track Changes is merely pointing out the changes being made.

Do you have the same problem if you open Word in safe mode?

Open Office apps in safe mode on a Windows PC - Microsoft Office