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Outlook 2013 Text Turned Garbled and Jumbled and Washed Out and....

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I swear ma, I didn't break it. There I was, happily using my Outlook 2013, doing my way too many hours of email each day, and it happened. It might have been after a Windows update, cause I swear I didn't change a thing, but one day it just happened.

I had been checking email for ten or so minutes, things start getting jumbled up. My menus partially disappear. I couldn't see my folders to navigate to them. I had to mouse over text, forcing the display area to refresh so I can read what was there. But I didn't change a thing to mess things up.  I swear.

So here's what I did to un-jumble my text, ma.

  • Open Outlook 2013
  • File Options
  • Advanced
  • Display
  • Check "Disable hardware graphics acceleration"
  • Restart your computer

I swear ma, I didn't break it in the first place. But for the others out there, I'm posting this in hopes that the SEO gods will catch it and save them some aggravating hours in their lives.

#keywords: garbled, jumbled, scrambled outlook 2013 hardware acceleration

Comments

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2014
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2014
    Disabling the hardware graphics acceleration in the options worked instantly, THANK YOU!!!!!

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2014
    seo keyword symptoms: scrambled text, disappearing text, disappearing menus, disappearing folders list, disappearing quick access toolbar, jumbled text, scrambled text and menus.

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2014
    @mike - glad this helped you out.  I know it was aggravating the heck out of me and I couldn't find the solution anywhere.  May your outlook text stay clear and crisp!

  • Anonymous
    August 20, 2014
    today I am noticing the fix is not 100%. Over time Outlook starts to lose graphics when I switch to Calendar and back to inbox, the longer I have the program open, it eventually reaches a point where the Quick Access Toolbar disappears on emails and Outlook window, so you cannot see the functions at top to save or close. Once you click on the top right corner to close Outlook and reopen, everything comes back. I think your fix might be a temp fix and Outlook really needs to be uninstalled and reinstalled, which is somewhat of a big task to save specific items. I would like to know how my Outlook got like this, did you by chance try to install the free version of Business Contact Manager? This is the only thing that I changed with the program and then it went downhill from there.

  • Anonymous
    August 24, 2014
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 27, 2014
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 05, 2014
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 06, 2014
    @Antonio - glad it helped you out!  makes it worth the time to put it together...

  • Anonymous
    November 11, 2014
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    December 19, 2014
    Had the exact same issue and spent over an hour with Dell tech support on my new XPS One with no positive result.  This solution worked, thanks!

  • Anonymous
    January 09, 2015
    That's a huge help!  It worked like a charm.  Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    March 04, 2015
    Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    April 14, 2015
    Thank you! This was very helpful.

  • Anonymous
    April 21, 2015
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 21, 2015
    @vince - awesome.  I know it cost me 3 months of eye agony, glad to be of help.

  • Anonymous
    May 26, 2015
    Thanks for posting.  I have been dealing with this forever.  

  • Anonymous
    June 03, 2015
    Thanks, saved me a lot of time!

  • Anonymous
    June 22, 2015
    You Rock!  Thank you!  This has been driving me up the wall... all fixed now.  :-)

  • Anonymous
    July 09, 2015
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2015
    Mike, You saved me.  I had been to the Geek Squad, Samsung and Microsoft Support (twice).  The fixes included computer updates, Reinstalled Outlook 2013 once and reinstalled MS Office twice.  Nothing worked.  I googled and found you.  Thanks again!  Sherry

  • Anonymous
    November 06, 2015
    Well done!! you saved me a lot of time, even though for me, I just had to enable hardware acceleration but still this was a great clue!

  • Anonymous
    November 22, 2015
    Outlook 2013 - I have the same issues. Disabling hardware acceleration does not help. Reinstalling Office 2013 helps only for a day or two, then back to the same problem - email text disappears, ribbon at top disappears, left folders disappear, sometimes Office 2013 hangs. THIS IS A RIDICULOUS PROBLEM that SO MANY people are having. I cannot believe Microsoft has DONE NOTHING to fix it. I have lost so many new emails, even after repeatedly saving them. I also have to send them to myself 3-4 times just to be sure I do not lose what I am typing, as the Save sometimes does not work. My system is pristine, all other scans and applications work flawlessly. I did not have any of these issues in previous versions of Outlook. And, by the way, all my PST and OST folders are in the new data file format, none are in ANSI. MICROSOFT - FIX THIS!!!!!

  • Anonymous
    November 30, 2015
    Thank you, great help. Appreciate you posting this article.