I have come across and issue with a client that is having a weird formatting issue where their text is being altered by empty headers and footers. It corrects itself once you open the header and then close it, or if you open the document and view it in Draft view and then go back to Print Layout view. This has affected all older documents as well and seems to have happened all at once. Weird thing is that Word does not think that the information in the document has changed at all so if you Save it, it reverts to the improperly formatted version. If you print the document, the formatting is fine. Any ideas as to why this is happening?

Thank you

Hi,

May I know your version of Word? According to your description, I can't reproduce this issue with my local environment. Thus, please the following steps and check it is helpful:

Rename the Normal.dot or Normal.dotm global template file

You can prevent formatting, AutoText, and macros that are stored in the global template file from affecting the behavior of Word and of documents that you open. To do this, rename the global template file. When you restart Word, Word will create a new global template file.

Important When you rename the global template file, several options are reset to their default settings. The options that are reset include custom styles, custom toolbars, macros, and AutoText entries. Therefore, we strongly recommend that you do not delete the global template file.

Path:

Windows 8 or Windows 8.1, Windows 7 or Windows Vista:
ren %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\Normal.dotm OldNormal.dotm

Reference:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/921541

If this issue still exists, could you send us a sample file via Email (ibsofc@microsoft.com).

PS: Please use the URL as the email subject.

Regards,