I have been using Office 2007 Word for years with no compatibility problem with any Word documents, no matter how old they were. Suddenly, and by "suddenly" I mean this behavior never existed before this morning, all documents except newly created ones open in compatibility mode.
The only thing I have done differently than normal was this morning I ran a document compare between a Word 2003 document and a Word 2007 document. Now, and seemingly only since then, all my old documents are opened in compatibility mode. Instead of graphics, table of contents, page numbers, etc, tags are displayed and formatting is off. This was never the case prior to this morning. It's like running that compare woke some evil Word demon up. If I give up and convert a document the formatting is off, and tags instead of things like page numbers still show until I print.
So what changed? I did not touch Word options or make any Word configuration changes. The only thing I did differently was for the first time I can remember I used the compare feature and noticed seemingly all of the sudden I have this compatibility 'feature.' I have used this same installation of Word 2007 on my personal machine for approximately 6 years, and my last upgrade was a year ago to Windows 8. And I have automatic updates disabled to prevent new surprise features.
I have worked through the reams of internet posts on this topic and have subsequently checked that the file save option is set to docx (which it was), I have inserted the Dword "CompatMode=0" into the registry (there was not one prior), and I have renamed the normal.dot to another name. No difference.
I appreciate any help, but what I don't need is an explanation of how Word compatibility mode works. I would love to know why it all of the sudden came on, and how do I get back to not having it mess up all my older files? I cannot accept the stock answer I often see that 'this is just how Word 2007 works' because it didn't for me for years until this morning. Any help would be appreciated.
