New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…

Original story (published on December 29, 2021) follows:

MS Word is one of the most popular word processors in the world. However, in the last few days, its users have been facing an annoying issue that limits its capabilities.

According to multiple reports, it all started from a recent update. As it appears, MS Word users are unable to resize any text boxes that are inserted into the document (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

MS Word users can’t resize text box after a recent update

Many MS Word users report the text box resize issue. This situation is limiting the productivity of those who need to use this feature on a daily basis for the professional or student field.

Now, users must deal with a text box wich size is non-modifiable. So, it is problematic since they must adapt to the text box size, when the opposite should be the case.

Microsoft reportedly aware, some workarounds

A moderator of the Microsoft support forums replied that the problem is already known. Also, Microsoft could be already working on a fix. In the answer also add a potential workaround.

Apparently, the problem occurs mostly in documents with a .doc extension. So, the workaround is to change the extension of the affected document from .doc to .docx.

The workaround is to “upgrade” the affected document to the most recent *.docx format. Source

However, there are users who suffer the same issue in .docx documents as well. But, this reportedly happen only with new documents and not previous ones. So, another workaround is to use an old document as template.

To conclude, if there is any change related to the subject in the next few days, we will update this article with the pertinent information.

Interestingly, older documents still function normally with the text box function and I can add a new text box to it without issues. There’s an idea – use an old document as a template for new files until the bug is fixed! Source

Update 1 (January 04, 2022)

ISt 12:03 pm: A workaround has since been floated that seems to be addressing this issue for affected users. This involves upgrading the file format from doc to docx.

Featured Image: Microsoft

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