Online Word automatically deletes text with characters that have diacritical marks on Firefox

Question

I am experiencing a weird bug with the online version of Word. Sometimes when I write text with diaeresis, diacritical or umlaut marks, all the text that I've written after the first "special" character gets deleted the very instant I press Enter to mark the start of a new line. This is highly annoying when writing in my native Finnish, where we have plenty of Ös and Äs. Most weird, this does not happen all the time, but very randomly, and I have not been able to recognize what is causing this. Sometimes Word lets me write to my heart's content, but on another day any new "special" character triggers the behaviour, and I might lose a full paragraph of text with no recourse to bring it back. This happens also when I am writing in English and might write the name of someone who has an Ä in their name, and everything after the first Ä gets deleted when I enter a new line with Enter. I primarily use Firefox, so I don't know whether other browsers have this bug as well. To be clear, this only happens with online Word, whereas many other online writing platforms I use in my work (Overleaf, Authorea, Etherpad, OnlyOffice etc.) do not have similar issues. I've tried changing the locale and languages to match the language I am writing in, but to no avail. Again, this does not seem to happen with Chromium-based browsers.

I welcome any suggestions from the community.

Answer 1

Hello.
I found this thread while looking for a solution to the exact same problem OP had.
For me, changing the browser helped. On Chrome the issue does not exist.

For more context both Firefox and Chrome are being used on Ubuntu 24.04
If you'd help me with reporting a bug to the MS Office team regarding the issue I would be thankful.

Best regards Rafal.

Answer 2

Hi Waeiski

This my 2nd follow-up regarding your "Online Word automatically deletes text with characters that have diacritical marks on Firefox" issue. We would like to know if the issue you have raised to us is still on-going. If yes, please reply to the thread so we can continue troubleshooting your concern.

Thank you.

Best Regards,

Lonex P.

Microsoft Moderator

Answer 3

Hi Waeiski

We have noticed that you have not replied to our last response. We would like to know if the issue you have raised to us is still on-going. If yes, please reply to the thread so we can continue troubleshooting your concern. 

Thank you. 

Best Regards,

Lonex P.

Microsoft Moderator

Answer 4

Hi Waeiski

Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community.

I understand the frustration you are experiencing with the online version of Word when using Firefox. This issue seems to be related to how Word handles special characters like diaeresis, diacritical, or umlaut marks. Since this problem occurs randomly and only with Firefox, it might be a compatibility issue between Word and the browser.

To troubleshoot this issue, you can try the following steps:

Try a Different Browser

Since this issue does not seem to occur in Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave), switching to one of these might be a temporary workaround.

Disable Auto-Save in Word Online

Some users have reported that auto-save might be interfering with text input.

Try disabling auto-save and manually saving your document instead.

Check Firefox Settings

Open Firefox Settings → General → Language & Appearance.

Ensure your preferred language is correctly set.

Try disabling spell check to see if it affects the issue.

Use a Different Input Method

If possible, try copying and pasting text from Notepad or another editor into Word Online.

This might prevent the deletion issue.

I hope these suggestions help you resolve the issue you are facing.

Best Regards,

Lonex P.

Microsoft Moderator