Word Randomly Deleting Spaces Between Words - What is the root cause?

Problem: Spaces randomly deleted between words.  For example:  This is a sentencewith an example of the error.

Scale:  7 of 14 students (50%) which strongly suggest a non-student specific causation. 

Prevalence: As much as 8 occurrences within two (double spaced) pages.

Factors:

 

  • Original Creation of Documents:  2010 Word for Windows (Professional Plus) & 2011 Word for Macintosh*1
  • Documents reviewed with 2011 Word for Macintosh (possibly edited/resaved as well).
  • Documents submitted to instructor and reviewed for accuracy on 2010 Word for Windows (Enterprise Edition).
  • Random missing spaces between words was observed in the digital version at the destination computer (instructors computer) using 2010 Word Enterprise Edition.

*1 - The documents were almost evenly created between Windows and Macintosh platforms between the 7 students that experienced the anomaly, yet, the anomaly WAS NOT present when the students submitted originally.  In other words, students used both platforms and the anomaly did not exist at the time all the papers were digitally submitted to the instructor.

Factors not contributing:  To be clear, this issue has nothing to do with printers or drivers, this issue is strictly relating to Microsoft Word as the anomaly was observed in the digital version of the files.

Potential contributing factors:  Documents were emailed to Gmail account, reviewed to ensure no data corruption using 2011 Word for Macintosh then they were copied to an external hard drive.  The hard drive was then plugged into a Windows platform and reviewed by the instructor, at which time the anomaly was present.

Root Cause: ???

V/R,

James

Stefan Blom
MS 365 Word MVP since 2005
Volunteer Moderator
MS 365, Win 11 Pro
~~~
Note that I do not work for Microsoft
https://mvp.microsoft.com/
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Stefan,

Thank you for the response, however I had already reviewed that article in its entirety and it did not contain any of the factors that are present in my situation.

My issue did not involve printers or Word 2007.

V/R,

James

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Note that GrayKnowlton's reply (the reply marked as Answer) in the thread I linked to does mention that printing isn't an issue.

Are you sure that Word 2007 wasn't involved at some point? To put it in a different way, can you tell for certain that the document wasn't created based on an old template or via Save As on an old, existing document?

Since MacWord is part of the equation, I suggest that you ask in the MacWord forum at http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macword?sort=lastreplydate&dir=desc&tab=Threads.

Stefan Blom
MS 365 Word MVP since 2005
Volunteer Moderator
MS 365, Win 11 Pro
~~~
Note that I do not work for Microsoft
https://mvp.microsoft.com/
~~~
Please specify Word version & OS in your question

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Last updated January 11, 2024 Views 3,417 Applies to: