Graphical glitch in Word and Outlook (Office 365)

[FSx3]

Ok convinced I will test it out on two machines today and report back. Curious!

 

[Arlamas]

This?

Microsoft releases emergency updates to fix XPS display issues (bleepingcomputer.com)

View attachment 281793

Ok that’s interesting and I will test it this evening.

Yesterday I found out something interesting:
I‘ve made a clean Win11 installation on my PC.
After this, Office was the first installation… then chipset drivers via Gigabyte homepage and the rest of missing drivers via windows update, which installed AMD GPU drivers from mid 2021.

Until then, Office worked perfectly fine.

But then I updated the AMD drivers to the latest version and the glitches started to appear.

So for todays evening I will try the patch mentioned from Mussels, but if that won’t work, I’ll try some newer drivers between mid 2021 and the latest.

 

[Mussels]

It would make sense if the affected windows update kicked the issue in around then - because at some point you had to install dot.net and these security fixes would come in too


It does say these fixes have to be manually installed at this point with that temporary workaround, so it'll be interesting to see if that workaround fixes it for anyone as a short term solution

 

[Arlamas]

I don’t think it has something to do with the update of .net, because if I uninstall the latest gpu driver and use the one from win update again, it looks like everything is working again like before. :-/

But I’ll give it a try…

 

[Mussels]

I don’t think it has something to do with the update of .net, because if I uninstall the latest gpu driver and use the one from win update again, it looks like everything is working again like before. :-/

But I’ll give it a try…

If its related to this security feature, the old driver may not even support it and therefore 'break free' of the bug

quotes like this make it seem very likely to be related, even if the article is about the same bug in another context

rendered using affected Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) based apps.

As i believe that the new office is likely to be one of those apps


Heres the MS link
Windows message center | Microsoft Learn

The "Known issue" about rendering artifacts due to an internal change (and changing rendering is exactly what i'd expect to glitch out between drivers WHQL'd from windows update, vs manual ones)
KB5022083 Change in how WPF-based applications render XPS documents - Microsoft Support


This bug was caused by a Dec 13 update to windows - this thread is older, but the update could have come out on dev channels prior to that (or been official discovered later)

Workaround

Microsoft identified a compatibility workaround for this issue and made a PowerShell script to resolve this.

To install the compatibility workaround, follow the steps below.

1. Download the PowerShell script
2. Open a PowerShell prompt as an administrator
3. Within the prompt, navigate to the directory where the script was downloaded
4. Run the command within the prompt: .\kb5022083-compat.ps1 -Install

If the command succeeds, it will print "Installation completed." to the console window. If the command fails, it will display the reason for failure. To remove the compatibility workaround, follow the same steps as above, but replace step (4) above with: .\kb5022083-compat.ps1 -Uninstall

These updates showed for me today on all my systems as an "optional update"
KB5022083 Change in how WPF-based applications render XPS documents - Microsoft Support

because it depends on which version of dot.net you have installed, you may need different updates files if youo do this manually - and again this would fit well with the lack of some users having problems, as various programs and drivers install different versions of dot.net

This may not be related, but it's certainly plausible and worth multiple users with the issue investigating - check for optional windows updates for dot.net, and check what versions you have installed


This broke because they changed how various elements are rendered to patch a security problem, and combinations of drivers/programs/OS make it very possible for things to break if they aren't all on the same page with how to go about it (outdated dot.net/office + new driver expecting new method = corruption)

 

[Arlamas]

So as i said, I’ve tested the update this evening with the latest amd driver, but sadly without any success

Nevertheless I’d the idea of downgrading the driver to an earlier stage and for the first try, I decided to take the official old recommended whql driver 22.5.1 in combination with the .NET update.

After testing this driver for around 20 minutes in MS Word, I haven’t found any glitches at all!

sadly I’m out of time for today… but maybe I‘ll find tomorrow some more time and can try using this driver without the update.

 

[VDB]

Here it is early February, and this disastrous bug, which started back in September of last year, is still with us. No change. Call tech support at Microsoft today, and you will get a representative who is totally oblivious and has no clue what you are talking about. What in heaven's name can we do to?!!! How can we prompt Microsoft to become aware and act? Any constructive suggestions?

 

[Mussels]

Here it is early February, and this disastrous bug, which started back in September of last year, is still with us. No change. Call tech support at Microsoft today, and you will get a representative who is totally oblivious and has no clue what you are talking about. What in heaven's name can we do to?!!! How can we prompt Microsoft to become aware and act? Any constructive suggestions?

Yeah, the posts right above yours. Have you tried the optional windows updates and dot.net updates?

 

[rwilsond]

I might have a partial solution for some of you:

Had severe graphical glitches in Outlook 365 (App, not Web version) when hovering with the mouse over emails list or moving along title bar / top window border. When hovering emails, the cursor would sometimes jump to non-logical spots (e.g. mouse moved upwards, cursor jumping to an email further down). In the title bar, some parts of the screen would flash UI elements to locations where they don't belong etc.

I analyzed this issue further and found that it has to do with mouse movements. When trying to operate Outlook with the keyboard only, everything was ok. I then checked whether a different mouse driver (Logitech Anywhere 2S in my case, tried out drivers from Logitech vs std Microsoft ones) or a different link to my PC (Bluetooth vs Logi Dongle) might do the trick, to no avail.

I tried 20 different settings in my AMD Adrenaline panel (Radeon 6800XT card) - nothing.

I then tried to play around with ouse settings and ACTIVATED MOUSE CURSOR TRACES in the system panel / mouse settings. BOOM! No more glitches!

It seems that mouse driver, windows redraws and graphics card hardware features (acceleration) are not matching up to each other, but at least this is a quick fix

I was drawn to this forum due to problems similar to those described here, and am a new member. I've spent several hours trying to resolve this issue. To my surprise, Word and Outlook appear to finally now be functioning properly after taking the advice of member "Repli". I went to "Mouse Properties" and enabled "Display Pointer Trails". Aside from the benefit of this being a 'workaround' for the underlying issue (of text behaving oddly in Word & Outlook while typing), I don't need or want these pointer trails, so I moved the slider all the way to the left to the minimum trail length, and the trails are hardly noticeable. FYI, I have a DELL desktop XPS 8900, widescreen curved Dell monitor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti card, Windows 11, and an annual subscription to Microsoft 365. Although I have a Logitech MX Ergo mouse, the problem remained after switching to a cheap Dell mouse. I 'believe' I have eliminated the following as the problem: keyboards, mice, BIOS, type of cable used for monitor, and video card driver. Although I have not swapped out my video card, I tend to think the problem may not be the video card (but not sure). I have also tweaked countless settings in Word, and elsewhere on my PC. So, thank you to "Repli" for what appears to be a good temporary fix, at the moment. Just hoping the problem does not reappear the moment I submit this post!

 

[VDB]

Have you tried the optional windows updates and dot.net updates?

Yes, of course. Latest Windows 11 update (Including optional), latest Office update, latest BIOS update, latest graphics-card update, latest manual .net update, etc. Also, tried all suggested settings, including display, Office, BIOS, and mouse settings. My question was not: How do I install the latest updates or try various settings to test them. My question was: How can we increase visibility of this problem for Microsoft? We have been testing updates and settings for five months now, and Microsoft still apparently remains unaware of the problem. Don't take my word for it; call them yourself and you will see. So, I repeat my question: Do you (or anyone else) have any constructive suggestion how we might get Microsoft to notice this problem so they can fix it? If not, that's fine, but please understand the question. I ask humbly, and I thank you.

 

[Arlamas]

Hey guys,

so... today i had some time to test various AMD drivers.

Driver	WHQL	Office glitch	Witcher 3 stability
22.5.1	yes	no	every 45-75 min crash
22.5.2	yes	flickering in while scrolling in excel table (181 Lines)	not tested
22.7.1	no	flickering in while scrolling in excel table (181 Lines)	not tested
22.8.1	no	flickering is getting worse	not tested
22.11.1	yes	flickering in excel, some missing letters in word	not tested

What I found out on my system:
- 22.5.1 is the last driver without any office glitches
- with 22.5.2 the desaster begins slowly with some glitches in excel, if i scroll through my table
- any newer version this behavior is getting worse
- with 22.11.1 office started to lose some letters while writing in Word or Excel

I only tested Witcher 3 with the first driver, because I wanted to know, if it might be okay for me, using this version for gaming. It is possible, that these crashes result of a yesterday released update of W3, i'll try it again with the (now) installed latest driver version 22.11.2... if it's still crashing, I think it has more to do with this update, or if it's then running fine, it might be the newer driver.
I'll update this post continously....

Edit: Every test was done without the .NET fix... because I'm mostly sure, that it doesn't have to do with .NET.

 

[FSx3]

Being .net related would explain why windows and office updates dont fix it, and why people have such an erratic mix of problems vs no problems

As well as what they mentioned about certain parts of a document like hyperlinks and glyphs being key triggers


Seems that it's related to securing documents against malware with "XPS" inputs, as the workaround on that page has you disabling some security features - another potential trigger some people may not be setting off

I now fully tested these XPS patches matching the installed .NET version on two machines but unfortunately it didn't stop the Office 365 glitching. Nevertheless thanks a lot for posting! Will try any idea on our path to the final glitch fix

- 22.5.1 is the last driver without any office glitches

Very interesting investigation! If you can prove that older GPU drivers were not affected this will be a great start to pin down a potential root cause. I cannot test rather old drivers as my new 4090 GPU requires recent drivers. But I should test older drivers on my Dell XPS 15 laptop which runs a Nvidia 3050 Ti.

One thing is for sure: I never had this bug on W11 22H1. Various problems only started appearing since 22H2 (even on fresh an clean 22H2 installs).

On Reddit we got one user replying saying that a very recent Office 365 beta build did fix the issue. I asked for the version but didn't get a reply back.

How can we increase visibility of this problem for Microsoft?

Honestly we need something like the users pulled of with the recent Samsung 990 Pro NVMe health bug. Just look at the traction it got on Reddit and many news sites.

Our issue is much more niche and so we need to (proactively) identify every single affected user and add him / her to our forum thread. Once we got plenty of traction we'd need to reach out to the tech news sites. They then request an official statement by Microsoft etc.

But hey we are slowing getting more users reporting this bug on the official MS feedback portal:

1) https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/5c3e818d-408d-ed11-a81b-000d3ae32cd0
2) https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/3ae089c6-da95-ed11-a81b-000d3ae32cd0

 

[Betablocker]

As the glitches reappeared magically on my system as well (after I've reported that they were gone after a clean installation of Win 11), I posted the issue on the feedback portal as well. I suggest everybody with this issue should do the same.

By the way: Has anybody ever reported the issue here as well? https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...&threadType=All&isFilterExpanded=false&page=1

 

[Mussels]

As the glitches reappeared magically on my system as well (after I've reported that they were gone after a clean installation of Win 11

It has to be an update causing the issues then, to windows, office, or a background service (like the previous dot.net weirdness idea)


Ugh. Glad i dont use office.

 

[Chris85]

Betablocker and me maybe experienced something important.
With a fresh installation of windows and office there are - for a certain time - no glitches. But then they suddenly appear again.
When reinstalling windows and office once again there are no glitches for a certain time again and so on.

 

[Betablocker]

I'm not sure whether the latest .NET-framework-update KB5022404 that was installed on my PC yesterday remedied the issue in a way. At least up to now the graphics-glitches in Office seem to appear a bit less.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Anyone ever try a standalone version of office to see if the issue exists
Pretty cheap

GoDeal24 Winter Software Sale Rolls On—Up to 62% Off on Genuine Software | TechPowerUp}

The only other option for people, if this issue continues, (and I know this won't be a solution for everyone) is to get a key to a version of office 2016 (maybe 2019 will work? I don't know, I don't have 2019 so I cannot verify this version will be a solution). I still use 2016 at home (my work computer is on 2010 for everything except Outlook) and I have no issues with any graphical glitches on either machine when using the office programs. My office computer uses a fancy 730 GT and my home computer is on a 3080 (both Windows 10).

This is just a suggestion that'll resolve the issue for folks, but I know not everyone will be able to or even willing to do it.

Indeed
Betting 365 don't like high frequency memory and latency is messing up display.
Pretty much why hardware acceleration is needed so online content is updated live.
Just like online gaming is usually total crap.

Has anyone tried without xmp profiles enabled and running memory at minimum supported ?

Or optimized defaults in bios.

 

[Chris85]

Yes, tried optimized defaults - glitches still persist.

 

[FSx3]

Has anyone tried without xmp profiles enabled and running memory at minimum supported ?

Yes, I can reproduce this bug on 3 different machines ranging from low end / old hardware (including slow memory) to highest end recent hardware. I also tried various different UEFI configurations with no success.

Betablocker and me maybe experienced something important.
With a fresh installation of windows and office there are - for a certain time - no glitches. But then they suddenly appear again.
When reinstalling windows and office once again there are no glitches for a certain time again and so on.

Yes that's indeed very interesting! What's your best guess why it then starts glitching again? Windows Update? I believe that your fresh installations are 22H2?

By the way: Has anybody ever reported the issue here as well? https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...&threadType=All&isFilterExpanded=false&page=1

Not yet, but we should start a fresh thread there to get more visibility. I found one glitch related older postfrom year 2021: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...e-typing/0504b68d-48a6-4193-8c6c-32abb2c0dcc7

 

[Chris85]

In the meantime I have actually freshly installed two versions of Windows 10 and three versions of Windows 11 so far. So the update/version no. doesn’t seem to affect the glitching.
I must confess that I have no clue what could cause the issues. I had theses glitches with my old setup (12900k, rtx 3080ti and ddr5 ram) and now with my new setup (13900k, rtx 4090 and ddr5 ram). Actually theses glitches were the reason for the pc shop to take my „old“ setup back so that I can have a new one as they also didn’t have an idea on how to solve these glitches.

 

[FSx3]

installed two versions of Windows 10

Interesting! So you have experienced this glitching on Windows 10 as well?

new setup (13900k, rtx 4090 and ddr5 ram)

Great upgrade nevertheless, I run the same - what a powerhouse (which makes the glitching even more ridiculous)

 

[Betablocker]

Not yet, but we should start a fresh thread there to get more visibility. I found one glitch related older postfrom year 2021: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...e-typing/0504b68d-48a6-4193-8c6c-32abb2c0dcc7

I've found this thread as well. So the issue seems to have been existing for over a year now.

Yes that's indeed very interesting! What's your best guess why it then starts glitching again? Windows Update? I believe that your fresh installations are 22H2?

No idea what could have caused the reappearing of this issue. Could have been the cumulative update KB5021255 that Windows installed, could be something else. I'm too lazy to setup my whole system from scratch again...

 

[ThrashZone]

In the meantime I have actually freshly installed two versions of Windows 10 and three versions of Windows 11 so far. So the update/version no. doesn’t seem to affect the glitching.
I must confess that I have no clue what could cause the issues. I had theses glitches with my old setup (12900k, rtx 3080ti and ddr5 ram) and now with my new setup (13900k, rtx 4090 and ddr5 ram). Actually theses glitches were the reason for the pc shop to take my „old“ setup back so that I can have a new one as they also didn’t have an idea on how to solve these glitches.

Hi,
Haven't looked up your board to see if ddr4 is compatible but worth a try if so.
Also if you'd be so kind as to enter all your main rigs hardware including mouse and keyboard/ wired/ wireless.

Also just for good measure do you use show mouse pointer trails ?

Weird stuff used to happen with that weird feature.

Also would be nice if you edited the original post with updates of stuff you've tried including with other office versions.

 

[FSx3]

Haven't looked up your board to see if ddr4 is compatible but worth a try if so.

I for my part can reproduce this bug on a DDR4 configuration as well (older PC).

Also if you'd be so kind as to enter all your main rigs hardware including mouse and keyboard/ wired/ wireless.

Added to my signature.

Also just for good measure do you use show mouse pointer trails ?

Tried this idea with no success on all my 3 affected machines - unfortunately.

 

[FSx3]

A new entry on my Reddit thread which disproves my theory that it's a Windows 11 22H2 induced bug but rather a Office & GPU (Nvidia + AMD) bug.