I'm finishing up my final paper for my public policy master class (25 pages) due tonight and as I'm typing work I have done previously disappears for brief amounts of time. Example it would look like this.
" I am writing about controlled burns in wild land urban interface"
What happens is
". about controlled burns in wild and urban interface"
So this just on a larger scale. I will be writing the end of a paragraph and the first two to three sentences in the paragraph disappear from the screen. They reappear when I move to another section of the paper, they can be copied and clicked on with the mouse just don't appear on the screen.
Besides making it difficult to write a paper when you can't see what you just wrote to keep the flow going I'm worried one of these times the writing will actually disappear.
We just updated our Mac to the new operating system For what it's worth.
Comments
Toss the apple in the trash and get a real computer would be my beat advice
Thanks for the helpful advice.
It may not be helpful right this moment but it's the best and right advice.
For now I suggest you transfer your work out of word if you can. Do you have Indesign or whatever the Crapple equivalent is to it? Its a document making software and is a million times better to use than word especially when you are importing images, graphs etc to be used in the middle of text.
Word ultimately should only be used for text, imo.
What word processing application are you using. I seem to recall having a similar issue with Word when I wrote my masters paper, I think what it came down to was that I had a ton of graphs and equations in the document and the app was slowing to a crawl.
You could also try to minimize and maximize your window to force a repaint of the document on the screen, might help.
Not a mac user so I can't speak to that.
I do have a few matrix graphs and such in the paper. I'm just so worried that if I try any major fixes the whole thing will be lost.
could you do a save as and save another copy to make changes and see if it fixes it? That would keep the original intact incase something goes wrong.
In addition - how have you inserted those pictures? If they are full-res you probably need to compress them. For each picture/graphic do the following:
- left-click on the image
- navigate to the "Picture Format" in the toolbar
- Select "Compress Pictures"
- Select an appropriate resolution (web would be my suggestion), and uncheck the "apply only to this picture option"
- Select OK
edit: these steps are for the Windows version - i'm assuming it applies to Mac as well but I wanted to put the disclaimer out there.
Do you have Track Changes on? Sometimes that messes up the document when there is a large amount of information that "Track Changes" is tracking.
Don't have much experience with Apple, but could you try copying and pasting in to a new document? What word processing program are you using? Is it office? or is it what Mac has built in? Do you have access to another Word Processing program? Not exactly the same, but I have had issues with spreadsheets at my job and have had to copy and paste in to a new document because something with the formatting was off and I could not find what the issue was.
Using actual Microsoft word.
I'd save my work and repair Office and try again (assuming you're using Office, if not repair the word processing application you're using).
I would also try this, if you boot office in safe mode (not sure how to do this on a Mac) it will give you the option to repair your office. Also, see if there is an update for office since there was just an update to the OS. Might be a compatibility issue as well. Just throwing out ideas. I tried googling the issue and didn't find anything that helped.
Yep tried that first but since it's not traditional "overwrite" type issue there is nothing out there. That was my first worry but I know how to check that and like I said the work is still there just gone invisible.
" I am writing about controlled burns in wild land urban interface"
Couldn't be more OT since what we have here is an uncontrolled burn in a rural interface.
What I have done in past Is to ctrl a to copy all, open a new doc and ctrl v to paste all. I have found with large docs (especially with embedded content like pics, etc) the document gets damaged over time with lots of editing. If this solves your problem and it looks gold in the new doc, then save the new, delete the old. I would also reboot your computer too fwiw after your file is fixed/saved. That would hopefully clear everything out. TKP has broke your puter. /s
Also, if you are able to, view it on a different computer (zip and email or save to a zip drive, etc), If it looks/behaves correctly there, then at least that narrows it to your original laptop/program. The other thing I thought about.. are your charts/pics copied into your doc or are the linked to another source? That could cause a lot of issues in a big doc too.
Lots of suggestions here:
- compress the images (see my post above)
- Type the text in to a notepad equivalent, or Google docs, and paste each paragraph in when done
- Use an external keyboard (assuming you are using a laptop) or try a different keyboard (i doubt this is the issue, but you never know until you try)
- close out any non-essential applications you have running in the background
Looking at all those things (using a desktop)
Have you tried copy and pasting your work into an online word processor like Google Docs? Perhaps you can at least finish your paper there if it works and then move it back to your Microsoft Word Mac OS version.
I've never encountered your issue, but then again, I haven't used Office on Mac.
Did you try turning it off and on again?
In all seriousness word can be janky alot have you tried typing up stuff on a new document and bringing it all together in one large file at the end? Word is not too good once the document gets really long.
You can try libre office, its mostly compatible with word, so you can do all you're work and save it as a word document and then open in Word to make sure everything looks fine.
Libre office is free, it is a port from open office (libre is the preferred version).
If you go for another degree then the answer is learn LaTeX. But too late for what you need right now.
Have you tried paying Word millions of dollars and telling it to GTFO?
Not sure if this helps, but here's a Microsoft article to take a look at.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_word-mso_other-mso_archive/why-does-my-text-just-disappear-as-im-typing-in-a/5b244d9c-58de-4471-8966-7bfca2aad96b
This may not apply to Macs, but do you have any other Word documents open? In particular any documents that are in protected view where you need to click enable editing at the top of document. I have seen this kill the performance of all MS Office applications especially if the document you are editing is particularly large or complex. On windows you can see this through really high CPU usage.
No matter what the issue is. I would consider versioning your files after any major changes. Just put the date and time at the end of the filename. Also make sure you are periodically saving a copy to somewhere else other than your computer like Google Drive.