How to turn off annoying MS Word Features

UPDATE 10/20/2006

• Added turning off Personalized Menus

Here's my list of things to turn off.  Man, they are annoying.  Enjoy.

1. Creating New Styles for Every Format Change

Problem
Someone at Microsoft thought it would be helpful to create a feature called "Keep track of formatting" that would create and modify styles as you edited your Word document. A style named "Heading 1" would be recreated and named "Heading 1 + 11 pt" once you modified the font size of some text already under the "Heading 1" style.

As text is changed, more and more styles are created by Word until your Styles and Formatting pane looks like the thing to the right.

Solution
Tools > Options > Edit tab > uncheck "Keep track of formatting"

2. Opening Docs in Reading Layout

Problem
This feature hides all toolbars and puts two pages side-by-side on your screen, and is the new default layout when you open docs from Outlook.  This annoying feature must be turned off!

Solution
Tools > Options > General tab > uncheck "Allow starting in Reading Layout."

3. AutoFormatting

Problem
Some of Microsoft Word's auto formatting is helpful, but there are four particular formats that are not.

• Replacing regular quotation marks with "smart quotes"
• Replacing ordinals (1st) with superscript
• Replacing fractions with a fraction character (1/2)
• Replacing hyphens with dashes (-)

While using Microsoft Word, the auto formatting happens while you type. Most people don't even notice it. The problem is that when you cut-n-paste some text from Microsoft Word into a plain text editor such as a message board or weblog entry form, the text editors do not recognize Word's formatted version of these characters.

Depending on the type of text editor you're using, a pair of quotation marks could end up giving you characters like �. This is a real example. Microsoft Word's auto formatting should be left inside Word, but even then, it's not that helpful.

Solution
Tools > AutoCorrect Options > AutoFormat As You Type tab > uncheck the appropriate checkboxes.

4. Paste Options widget

Problem
When you paste into Word, a little control pops up to give you paste options.  And it stays in your way!

Solution
Tools > Options > Edit Tab > deselect "Show Paste Options button"

5. Show inserted fields as shaded ALWAYS

Problem
When you insert a field into a document, it is nice to be able to see it as different from surrounding text. 

Solution
Tools > Options > View TAB > change Field Shading dropdown to "Always"

6. Change Default for "Show Markup" Box

Problem
When Word opens up a document, the default setting for the "Show Markup Box" is "Final Showing Markup", which means you always start in a view which shows you all of the tracked changes.  We want the default to be "Final."

Solution
Tools > Options > Security Tab > deselect "Make hidden markup visible when opening or saving"

7. Turning Off Personalized Menus

Problem

The default setting for MS Word is to only show you partial menus initially, and if you click the double arrow or wait a few seconds, it then reveals the rest of the menu.  This is helpful if you only use a few menu items regularly (it shows the most used), but if you use many, it's just an annoyance, fit to be turned off.

Solution

Tools > Customize > Options Tab > select "Always show full menus"

Comments

[seeker]

Is this useful to anyone?

[Cineaste]

I admit I am ignorant of these Word features. When I use Word I normally don't thing about these.

[Lawanda]

Actually yes, it was... that show paste options button always has annoyed me in my newer version of Word. :) Thanks!

[Rutje]

Great. Dugg!
(http://digg.com/microsoft/Turn_off_MSWord_annoyances_7_tips)

[Charlie]

The Reading Layout tips is a godsend. I've hated that feature ever since they put Office 2003 on my machine.

[Bwobby]

This is exactly what I've been looking for. I hate those annoying assumptions Microsoft made about my documents.

[Malcolm]

I have to say that I disagree with the first point. If you're trying to apply consistent formatting across and entire document, using the default setting to create a new style, in conjunction with the "Formatting in Use" view on the Styles and Formatting pane, quickly shows the harried layout editor what the writers have gotten up to. Easy to select all text with bold + underline and reformat it to something in the conventional style sheet.

[magpie]

for all of you 2007 users that want to fix these fleas:

to find the Options Menu click on the big "Office Button" in the upper left corner of word. at the bottom of the window click on "Word Options"

1) keep track of formating: Advanced => Editing Options (first section)
3) auto format(smart quotes): Proofing => AutoCorrect Options button in the first section.
(this is also where you'll find my personal most hated -capitalize first letter of table cells and -internet and network paths with hyperlinks.)
4) paste options widget: Advanced => Copy, Cut and Paste (second section down)
5) show inserted fields: Advanced=> Show Document Content
6) show markup: Display => always show these formating marks. (but i don't know if this will actually fix the problem you'll are having - i don't do change tracking)
7) partial menus: irrelevant in 2007 - whether you love the new format or you hate it.

enjoy, magpie

[e-tat]

How do I get it to stop opening a 'Getting Started' window on startup?

[ron]

i hate this program more than any other but unfortunately am forced to use this turd at work. and "features" like these that you have to make an effort to turn off is one of the reasons why.

[hank]

this is off the subject but does anyone know how i change my email from hotmail to yahoo in windows...i can't find an option and gates and company does not want me to have one! will really appreciate it!

[Jennifer]

My favorite options to change are:
General tab
- max "Recently used file list" to 9
- turn off "automatically create drawing canvas"
Edit tab
- change insert/paste pic to "in front of text". Then I can resize and crop before setting the text wrapping.

One of my co-worker's computer keeps losing the check in "typing replaces selection" under edit. Drove her nuts until we found the option.

I personally like the "track formatting" option. I get a lot of docs with horrid formatting, and it makes it easier to make everything consistent. And while the paste options button can be annoying, I find it too useful to get rid of. Tho', mine goes away the minute I do something to the copied text...

[David]

Very cool. These are good. I usually get around to changing some of these on every computer I'm on. Now it's nice to have all these Word Annoyances in one place.

And I also found some new annoyances to loathe. But that can now be rendered helpless.

[seeker]

I'll have to update this with the great suggestions, maybe change the title to indicate which version of Word. I don't have 2007 yet, but thaks Magpie - maybe I should "upgrade." LOL.

[easy]

Good info, simple, direct. I will use some of the tips. Thanks!

[工控网]

How do I get it to stop opening a 'Getting Started' window on startup?

[toen]

great .. I had no chance to figure that out, this article help me out.

[Chief]

Click on this link to get some help in eliminating this annoying 'Getting Started' window. HTH

[Chief]

Ooops. Here's the link I referred to:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/word/HP011127341033.aspx?pid=CH010267771033

[Philiprip]

Thanks, I hate the paste options widget. Here's another one for you. I hate the way I have to keep taking the tick out of the "automatically create drawing canvas when inserting Autoshapes" box. It doesn't seem to want to stay unticked and reappears everytime I go back to word. A regular pain in the ass.

[DunxD]

Turn off the shared workspace pane for Sharepoint documents (lots of places use Sharepoint, but none of the collaboration features are enabled - Word takes up a chunk of screen with a useless pane)

Tools > Options > General > Service Options > Online Content > Shared Workspace > Untick both boxes under "Show the shared workspace pane at startup when:"

[Philiprip]

Thanx DunxD!! Goodbye useless drawing canvass for good.

[barrie singleton]

Very useful - thanks. I have already turned off the formatting. BUT I have a problem with "paste" (XP) it comes and goes on a whim - mostly goes. This fault has been posted on the net (by others)for two years or so. Most discussion goes way over my head or suggests non Microsoft fixes. Can anyone help in simple terms?

[Silvia Wu Guin]

really useful! Please, would anyone help me to disable the symbol of "grades" (the little circle, like centigrades) that appears automatically when we type numbers with spaces between?

thank you in advance

[Ken Butters]

Thanks for the Mark-ups tip... I knew it had to be there somewhere, but couldn't find it for the life of me. It was driving me crazy.

[Teresa]

I've tried the changes for the turning off the "final showing markup". It still keeps coming back. Anyone have any ideas how to stop this maddening feature?

[Brit]

Thank You. Great article.

[dan]

I am having the same problem with the 'final showing markup'. I tried the changes explained above, but it keeps coming back every time I open a document. How do I stop this???

[Original Sin]

Although I disagree with most of what you consider annoying, I found this list very helpful, particularly since a couple of the annoyances (or features as I consider them) were switched off on my version of Office, and I was looking for a way to switch them back on again... So thanks!

[mtn_lion]

DunxD! A bazillion thanks for helping me stop that MADDENING "Shared Workspace" pane from wasting space every single time I ever opened a Sharepoint document!

[Vicki]

Thanx for this valuable list!

I've had a love/hate relationship with Word for some years now, and with every new version they make up some new annoying thingie that gets in your way. I am so glad to get rid of the paste widget... I have looked all over for that and couldn't find it 'cause I didn't know what they called it.

The only way I've seen to get rid of Track Changes Turned ON By Default is to copy all the text in the offending document and paste it into a new document. Arrgghh, I only found this solution after dividing up a long document into smaller chunks, each of which has the same Track Changes Turned ON By Default property! It's like the Sorcerer's Apprentice!

Thanx again all!

[Kevin]

This is a great page! Has a bunch of improvements to the poorly implemented features of this lousy program that I've had to learn over the years (I, too, am forced by the workplace to use this badly designed program). Thanks for putting so much useful info in one place. BUT -- I still can't solve one of my biggest current Word annoyances -- once a document has been used with track changes, it seems impossible to turn off the "View markup" setting. I can see the program turn it on when I reopen the document, but no matter what I turn off, it always comes back. Has anyone else solved this annoying "feature"?

[Jim]

For Word 2003, I find that I can turn off the View Markup in following way: 1. Turn on TRK. 2. Change the View setting to Final. 3. Turn off TRK. 4. Save. The document reopens showing the Final without markup.

[jimw]

Thanks for the information - I appreciate the help getting rid of the annoying markup view!