Graphical glitch in Word and Outlook (Office 365)

[Betablocker]

It's worth narrowing things down, and not everyone has been giving all their information.
I have no idea what GPU you have, you're not the OP of the thread, haven't filled out your system-specs dropdown and aren't the person who gave the details three posts ago

Do you belong here discussing the issue? absolutely!
But also, understand that a dozen people saying "me too" without clarifying things doesn't help clear things up



Hence the suggestions about changing DPI to 100% and rebooting, nvidia driver settings and so on - theres something in common but without people giving proper accounts of things we'll never find out what's in common between your systems.

Office is rendered like a 3D program, so forcing 3D settings on like antialising or resolution scaling could definitely screw with things
I've seen people get 1080p displays and force their desktop resolution to 4K with DSR and then complain text wasn't clear

Of course you're right, I'm sorry. One other issue I've just noticed whenever I'm using an Office-App: When I press "Alt" on my keyboard I'm getting letters in black boxes all over the place (s. screenshot). I'm not sure whether this issue is related to the other graphical glitches, but I'm sure it's not supposed to be like this.

 

[Shou Miko]

I hate the updates that were pushed out to MS Office over the past year or more on the 365 office. Worthless changes that do nothing more than move options and rearrange the menu, but yet they seem to be very good at breaking stuff and not really fixing things properly

Have you tried to disable (or enable, I forget what it defaults to) the hardware graphics acceleration option in Word and for Outlook?

You go under File > Options > Advanced > then scroll down the to the Display section (should look something like this - this pic is from my office 2016 at home)
View attachment 240939

See if setting or disabling that option fixes things for you.

This option ain't the newest version anymore, and I spoken with Microsoft support about this because it leads to problems that you need to have Windows 10/11 decide if it should use hardware acceleration.

But the more people that request this back the bigger is the chance it will return.


I believe there is/was a reg hack for disabling hardware acceleration but I am not sure if it still works.

The first reply here but not sure if it works on the newer version.
Link: https://social.technet.microsoft.co...sable-hardware-accleration-gpo-for-office-365

This has become a bloody mess since someone at Microsoft thought it was great to remove

 

[Chris85]

Of course you're right, I'm sorry. One other issue I've just noticed whenever I'm using an Office-App: When I press "Alt" on my keyboard I'm getting letters in black boxes all over the place (s. screenshot). I'm not sure whether this issue is related to the other graphical glitches, but I'm sure it's not supposed to be like this.

Totally normal behavior. I noticed those boxes too

 

[tabascosauz]

Of course you're right, I'm sorry. One other issue I've just noticed whenever I'm using an Office-App: When I press "Alt" on my keyboard I'm getting letters in black boxes all over the place (s. screenshot). I'm not sure whether this issue is related to the other graphical glitches, but I'm sure it's not supposed to be like this.

That's just showing you the Alt+ keyboard shortcuts for various buttons. Not a bug.

As for the usual graphical glitches, I just finished an exam for which I had 50000+ words worth of notes. Word drove me up the wall, apparently at a certain document size it starts struggling, lagging, and causing high CPU usage (single core clocking up near Fmax, like it's in Cinebench ST). And then the graphical glitches happening every few minutes, sometimes obscuring entire lines of text until another action is performed (selecting other text, deleting, typing).

It's not confined to Word, Onenote is the same with the graphical glitches. Unfortunately a lot of the "fix" threads suggesting disable HW acceleration don't really work - some Office 2021 apps have that setting (Excel) and some don't anymore (Word). Sometime between Office 2016/2019 and 2021 MS reshuffled all the settings menus.

As usual with Microsoft, one step forward and two steps back.

 

[Betablocker]

That's just showing you the Alt+ keyboard shortcuts for various buttons. Not a bug.

As for the usual graphical glitches, I just finished an exam for which I had 50000+ words worth of notes. Word drove me up the wall, apparently at a certain document size it starts struggling, lagging, and causing high CPU usage (single core clocking up near Fmax, like it's in Cinebench ST). And then the graphical glitches happening every few minutes, sometimes obscuring entire lines of text until another action is performed (selecting other text, deleting, typing).

It's not confined to Word, Onenote is the same with the graphical glitches. Unfortunately a lot of the "fix" threads suggesting disable HW acceleration don't really work - some Office 2021 apps have that setting (Excel) and some don't anymore (Word). Sometime between Office 2016/2019 and 2021 MS reshuffled all the settings menus.

As usual with Microsoft, one step forward and two steps back.

Pressing Alt+Tab immediately gets rid of the glitches immediately. But of course that's not a longterm solution...

 

[ChevyAmpera]

I have the same issue. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 (i9-13900K, Windows 11) and get the same glitches in Office 2019 and Office 2021
I noticed that the glitches get worse/more noticable when you enter or delete text in a document that contains (quick) tables.

Edit: Installing the Insider Version 2301 (Build 15929.20006) fixes the glitch issue unfortunately it makes Microsoft Word/Outlook crash whenever you close it and open it again after installing the update This also happened when opening Word/Outlook in safe mode so I uninstalled the insider version again.
I've now opened a case with Micosoft techsupport and will report back, if/when they find a solution.

 

[IgnatioMemo]

I have the same issue. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 (i9-13900K, Windows 11) and get the same glitches in Office 2019 and Office 2021
I noticed that the glitches get worse/more noticable when you enter or delete text in a document that contains (quick) tables.

Edit: Installing the Insider Version 2301 (Build 15929.20006) fixes the glitch issue unfortunately it makes Microsoft Word/Outlook crash whenever you close it and open it again after installing the update This also happened when opening Word/Outlook in safe mode so I uninstalled the insider version again.
I've now opened a case with Micosoft techsupport and will report back, if/when they find a solution.

Can you please clarify what type of glitches the insider version fixed for you? Was it the text glitches like these here

or some other glitch? In addition to the text glitching I sometimes see parts of the office UI in the middle of the text for a fraction of a second. For me it does not seem to matter for such glitches if I have (quick) tables or not in the word documents.

 

[ThrashZone]

I hate the updates that were pushed out to MS Office over the past year or more on the 365 office. Worthless changes that do nothing more than move options and rearrange the menu, but yet they seem to be very good at breaking stuff and not really fixing things properly

Have you tried to disable (or enable, I forget what it defaults to) the hardware graphics acceleration option in Word and for Outlook?

You go under File > Options > Advanced > then scroll down the to the Display section (should look something like this - this pic is from my office 2016 at home)
View attachment 240939

See if setting or disabling that option fixes things for you.

Hi,
Wow I'll have to see if 2016 office has hardware acceleration lol that is so ms

 

[ChevyAmpera]

Can you please clarify what type of glitches the insider version fixed for you? Was it the text glitches like these here

View attachment 275324

or some other glitch? In addition to the text glitching I sometimes see parts of the office UI in the middle of the text for a fraction of a second. For me it does not seem to matter for such glitches if I have (quick) tables or not in the word documents.

I've attached a video (mp4) of the glitching as a zip file, as this illustrates the graphic glitches better than I could describe them . The glitches shown in the video were gone in the insider version.

Mod Edit: zip file removed

 

[neatfeatguy]

Hi,
Wow I'll have to see if 2016 office has hardware acceleration lol that is so ms

The hardware acceleration is still showing up in my 2016 Word. I've got it unchecked, same with Excel.

I know when I uncheck those boxes Word and Excel don't feel like they're as sluggish when I'm typing things out or when I'm navigating through cells. I wish that option was still available in office 365 because using Word or Excel at work feels like molasses compared to 2016 version I have at home.

 

[Betablocker]

I have the same issue. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 (i9-13900K, Windows 11) and get the same glitches in Office 2019 and Office 2021
I noticed that the glitches get worse/more noticable when you enter or delete text in a document that contains (quick) tables.

Edit: Installing the Insider Version 2301 (Build 15929.20006) fixes the glitch issue unfortunately it makes Microsoft Word/Outlook crash whenever you close it and open it again after installing the update This also happened when opening Word/Outlook in safe mode so I uninstalled the insider version again.
I've now opened a case with Micosoft techsupport and will report back, if/when they find a solution.

I have the same insider build installed, but the glitches are still there.

 

[sgtdragon]

I upgraded to a new PC - Intel 13700 with a Radeon 6750. I have the same glitches. Not Nvidia issue. It's got to be something with office.
Using word pad or any other text editor, no problems.

 

[Mussels]

I upgraded to a new PC - Intel 13700 with a Radeon 6750. I have the same glitches. Not Nvidia issue. It's got to be something with office.
Using word pad or any other text editor, no problems.

Fascinating and thanks for the input!

Are you on windows 11, and do you use display scaling on a high resolution display?

 

[qubit]

@Chris85 Works ok for me and I've got the latest version installed. I've never had any issues, either. Is it still playing up for you? Make sure you've got the latest version.

 

[Lord Sonatine]

Sorry for my broken english but I'm french.

Anyway, I had the same issues but I found a temporary solution. You just have to go to the Nvidia Control panel, and choose which GPU you wanna use for WORD (obviously not the Nvidia one) and then it'll work perfectly. Here's how to do it :

 

[Betablocker]

This solution results in a very sluggish behaviour of word, at least for me

 

[Mussels]

Sorry for my broken english but I'm french.

Anyway, I had the same issues but I found a temporary solution. You just have to go to the Nvidia Control panel, and choose which GPU you wanna use for WORD (obviously not the Nvidia one) and then it'll work perfectly. Here's how to do it :

That would only work on laptops with integrated graphics

 

[lunarjimmy]

This issue has plagued me for as long as I can remember. Had this problem with a 3060TI, 3070, 3090, and 3080TI. The only fix was Disabling Hardware Acceleration before it disappeared from Office. But now the option is no longer there and the problem is driving me nuts. I've spoke to Microsoft and NVIDIA. Neither helped. Switching to Integrated Graphics does eliminate the problem, but as mentioned by Betablocker, it makes Word sooooo slow. It is unreal to me that such high end graphic cards can't operate MS Word properly. What is also unreal to me, is why the hell Microsoft removed the Disable Graphic Acceleration option. UGH!!

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Only browsers office would use is ie11 or edge
Guessing just go to internet options from control panel you can disable the wretched feature there for ie11
Then repeat in edge.
Remove both and find a better browser and disable it there.

 

[Lord Sonatine]

Indeed, I have a laptop but I didn't know that only laptops have integrated graphics. For my part, I don't have any slow issues when I use the integrated graphics.

Actually, the graphic acceleration option is still avaible. You'll find it (i'm not sure what are the correct names in english) => Parameters > Display > Graphics > And then the first line

But I don't know if it will work

 

[Mussels]

only laptops have integrated graphics.

Laptops integrated graphics works differently

On a laptop your display is connected to the integrated graphics, and the dedicated graphics does rendering and passes the final images along for the IGP to display


On a desktop, you'd need to connect your display to the integrated graphics, but for better performance it's always recommended to connect straight to the dedicated card

That, and a large majority of modern desktops dont have integrated graphics - most AM4 CPU's dont have it, and a lot of intel CPU's don't now either

 

[Lord Sonatine]

Ok thanks for the lesson

 

[repli]

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

 

[Betablocker]

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

It's great that this solution works for you, it wouldn't for me. Mainly, because my glitches are not related to mouse movement, as they happen when I'm just typing a text in Outlook or Word. And activating the cursor movement would distract me too much anyway. But I read somewhere else that the problem could have something to do with the Logitech-driver. So I'm curious to know whether those of you who are experiencing glitches have a mouse from Logitech. I have one.

 

[Chris85]

I have a Logitech G903 Lightspeed but I did not install the drivers from Logitech. I let Windows automatically install the drivers - don’t know whether this makes a difference or not.
The glitches in my case occur when typing text without using the mouse.