How to turn off annoying MS Word Features

UPDATE 08/28/2007

• Thanks to Jim for helping complete the turning off of "Show Markup."

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."

NOTE: IF CHANGE TRACKING IS TURNED ON FOR A DOCUMENT, IT WILL ALWAYS OPEN SHOWING MARKUP NO MATTER WHAT.  This solution will only work for documents for which change tracking is turned OFF.

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

HOWEVER, this alone may not do it for existing documents. For individual documents that persist in coming up with the markup showing, follow these steps:

1. Turn on Tracking
2. Change the View setting to Final.
3. Turn off Tracking.
4. Save.

The document reopens showing the Final without markup.

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!

[Richard]

Excellent- I just reinstalled Word 2003, and it has defaulted back to the original 'we think you're an idiot settings'...

[JohnH]

I didn't like the Paste Widget until I discovered that pressing Escape gets rid of it. Now I find it very useful since it avoids the need to copy and paste via notepad if you just want the plain text (especially useful when copying from webpages into Word).

Anyone know how to stop Word opening with Document Map displayed? I keep closing it but I'll open another document and it'll appear again.

Just one more, using Word for writing e-mails in Outlook causes Word to be opened in a small window next time you view a proper document, which is highly annoying. Why can't it figure out that you want a different window size for editing e-mails than for writing docuemnts?

[Paul]

How do you turn off the character counter in Microsoft word. Its a waste of trees!

[David]

When I open documents, they open in Markup view. I always have to go to the view menu and switch to Normal view. I'd like to have documents open in Normal view. Any idea how to do that?

[seeker]

David:

Point 6 (or maybe 2) above should answer that. Does it?

Paul:

To my knowledge, there is no "character count" feature in word. There is a word count, but that does not add text to the document.

There is also the line numbering feature, which you can turn on/off this way:

1. On the File menu, click Page Setup, and then click the Layout tab.
2. In the Apply to box, click Whole document.
3. Click Line Numbers.
4. Select/deselect the Add line numbering check box, and then select the options you want.

[sleep_heavy]

I really need some help on this one: There is this problem about Word always opening VIRUS SCAN REQUEST that takes so long for it to make before I get to open the Word Document. If somebody has any clue how I can turn this stupid feature off, please please email me at sleep_heavy@yahoo.com I have tried every thing but this stupid feature keeps cropping up. Much obliged and more power to everyone here.

[sleep_heavy]

I really need some help on this one: There is this problem about Word always opening VIRUS SCAN REQUEST that takes so long for it to make before I get to open the Word Document. If somebody has any clue how I can turn this stupid feature off, please please email me at sleep_heavy@yahoo.com I have tried every thing but this stupid feature keeps cropping up. Much obliged and more power to everyone here.

[Morenuancedthanyou]

Thank you for the very useful information. It also helped me find and turn off another feature that had been driving me nuts for months.

[seeker]

Do tell, is it one I have not listed here?

[kamal]

how can I get disable comments in my document for reading and printing, but not actually deleting them, sort of hide them.

[seeker]

Just go to the Reviewing toolbar (make sure it's visible first) and change your view to Final. You can also use the "show" dropdown on that same toolbar to choose individually what you want to see and not see when in "final showing markup" view.

[Matt]

Thank god for that... The show markup default was well and truely driving me up the wall.

Cheers for the list.

[olsgr]

Every time I type, for example, 10-15, microsfot word thinks its a date and automatically converts it to Oct 15. It becomes annoying once I need to sort. I changed the "format", but doesn't work. It either displays it as a date or a big number "ex: 39375" Thanks in advance!

[Loughlin]

RE TURNING MARK UPS OFF:
I find that if I can do it this way:
1. open the offending document
2. turn off the View Markup
3. Save the file as a different name

The re-named document then opens showing the Final without markup.
Then you can just change the "marked up version" to Draft or whatever, and re-name your "no mark up version" as FINAL.

[Chris Cargile]

Great info. however, changes to the 'track changes' boxes still do not solve the problem. I found something under file/properties/custom that says in the properties/name table "_ReviewingToolsShowedOnce".

I think this is a special macro that the Reviewer put in or something just to make their point stick. Any sugggestions? that is soo annoying. Great suggestions all around though!

[Chris Cargile]

Great info. however, changes to the 'track changes' boxes still do not solve the problem. I found something under file/properties/custom that says in the properties/name table "_ReviewingToolsShowedOnce".

I think this is a special macro that the Reviewer put in or something just to make their point stick. Any sugggestions? that is soo annoying. Great suggestions all around though!

[Brian]

Any clues for Word 2007? And what, pray tell, is TRK, please? Thanks!

[jennifer bernstein]

I am having issues with point #6. Every time I open a document shows it in the "show mark up" format. I followed what you said and hit "save" but yet changes do not hold. When open up again, back to "show markup "

Why wont changes save?

[seeker]

Did you
- accept all existing changes?
- turn off change tracking

[darul]

Very useful list, esp the "show markup" one. Thanks!

[Turn off Getting Started pain/window via StartupTaskPane]

The MS Word 2003 Startup Task Pane is also identified as Getting Started window/pane/feature. This dual nomenclature/identity can make its omission/removal more difficult. But the bottom line is Tools/Options/View/ Startup Task Pane/ checked-->unchecked to turn off the pain.

[hulkattack]

Exactly what I was looking for! Thanks a million.

[hulkattack]

Exactly what I was looking for! Thanks a million.

[Timothy]

How does one turn off the automatic numbering in lists?Whenever I type a number and hit enter for the next line it automatically puts the consecutive number in the next line. I'm sure there must be a way to turn off this annoying feature.

[Sally Justice]

I can't get Final Showing Markup to work it keeps opening up with mark up showing.
Word 2003 any ideas?

I followed above info but cna't find anythig on FINAL MARKUP
thanks

[EKSommer]

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! I am blissfully free of some of MS Word's bothersome quirks.

Now if MS would only do a focus group with real editors, we could tell them about all their other annoying non-options, such as searching forward AND backward with the find option, and lumping both fomratting and comments together in one tool. Why, why, why would anyone want to see all that pesky formatting stuff sticking of the side of an edited document????

[SMH]

Thanks Jim! Those steps are only way that I could turn off "View Markup" by default.

[Brian]

Thanks for sharing, Great tips

[Anna]

Someone has already asked this: can anyone tell me how to prevent Document Map from showing up, please???
It's driving me crazy.

[Sheila]

How do I get rid of that infuriating little lightening strike icon that hovers over text with incomprehensible auto correct options? It appeared when I was happily using my tab to do indents and it won't go away,

appreciate your page,

Sheila N

[Sheila]

How do I get rid of that infuriating little lightening strike icon that hovers over text with incomprehensible auto correct options? It appeared when I was happily using my tab to do indents and it won't go away,

appreciate your page,

Sheila N

[seeker]

I think that's number 4.

[Khurram]

Great great info. #6 really did the trick for me .. The persisitent Final Markup view was driving me crazy.
Thanks again!

[Kevin]

I have a problem where a document appears each time I type a particular word in any document in MS Word or Outlook. The document is completely un related to the word that I type, although it is a document that I have written. Its very strange. Any ideas.

[Jeff]

I was just searching the web for how to turn of the "start in markup" feature...but these tips touched on a lot of other annoying "features" that I was glad to learn how to turn off as well. Thanks!

[Jason]

Hopefully people are still seeing this thread and someone can help. Jennifer posted:

"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'm having this exact problem. I know where the option is but Word keeps turning it off for some reason, even while I'm working on a document. I suppose it's something I'm doing but I keep having to go back in and turn it on. Anyone know what's causing this?

[seeker]

Never heard of that. Perhaps she keeps hitting the Insert key? That toggles this feature...

[Ric]

Thanks - this was incredibly useful on several fronts!

[Jason]

Found my problem. I'm inserting a lot of drawings in my document and using the drawing canvas frequently. It appears that if I have the drawing canvas selected and paste a picture in from another document, Word automatically turns of the "typing replaces selection" option without warning. So I guess the moral of the story is to paste the picture into the document somewhere then drag it into the drawing canvas.

Anyone else run into this?

[dd]

oh thank god the Track Changes is finally gone, thanks so much!

[Ian]

This has solved a bunch a really annoying "features!
Thanks for the great collection.