WORD 365 greatly inflates document size Why?

Thanks for the clarification that you didn't edit the file on a USB stick.

I have seen numerous floppy discs become damaged, but only one hard drive has died on me. I tend to avoid USB sticks, but I know that good quality ones can last quite a long time.

With your long experience you know that limitations built into an old program such as Word are often still present in newer versions of that same program. Programmers are adding code rather than rewriting it from scratch.

In the forum, nobody has the power to change Word. Only Microsoft can do that. What we can do is make suggestions based on what we know of the program as it works today.

I can't explain why your documents become so large. We would have seen many reports in the forum if this was something that happened frequently to a lot of people.

Interesting question/assessment/claim--WORD can't do what? Oh, please. It's a computer program, it needs to work. There was no corruption and I did not edit from the flash drive, I uploaded it to the computer from the flash drive. However editing from removal media is hardly being a wanton cowboy, it's rather standard. Is there a risk? Of course. There's also a risk your computer might die right then and there whether it's new, old, or somewhere in between. There's really no need or reason to exaggerate "risk". This is a technical support community not social media.

In the meantime, please note I have 36 years experience using personal computers and word processing programs beginning with my Epson 80/86 the first personal hard drive computer (1987) DOS, word processing program Multimate Advantage ll -- the best word processing program I have ever used. Removable media in those days were 5 1/4 floppies advancing to 3.5 floppies, tape drivers, zip drives, memory sticks, cd, flash drives and so forth since the first modern removal media all the way back in1610. Do you know how many removal media I have had corrupt? None. Do you know how many PCs suddenly died on me? One, My first 80/86. Six weeks old I had to replace it, My greatest fear when switching from a typewriter that something would to my book came true when the computer suddenly up and fried itself while I was writing. Fortunately I was diligent with ensuring I saved my data to a floppy disk at regular intervals and all was not lost. Moral of the story, never, ever, ever, discourage people from using removal media. Always back your data up, save it to removable media when working, make copies, copies, and more copies. And WORD needs to fix its program. It will never be Multimate Advantage II, but it can try harder. It's time for these companies to stop "wringing the fun out of everything"* by making everything so complicated even the programs are confused by this time never mind the users.

*Dr Michael Delegianis to Squadron Leader Justin Charles, Ruins, Book Two, Bernice's Hair Part Two (c) 1992, 2018, 2023 Geralyn Dunbar-Giles

You have investigated a lot of factors which may be helpful to other users.

I would just like to ask if you regularly open documents from USB sticks and similar removable media? In that case, note that documents edited from a removable location tend to become corrupt. The underlying cause is that Word often can't find enough space for its temporary files on removable media. It will be safer to move the document to your hard drive before editing.

No, if you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, you should be able to use the desktop applications, not the online ones such as Word for the Web.

Is this the online version of Word, or the desktop application?