Mac Word mysteries: 1. Certain Word docs will go all grey when I start typing and will stay that way until I scroll away from that visible portion and then scroll back. 2. Likewise, toward the bottom of the page, Word wants to remember what used to be there before text shifted and won't show me what's really there unless I scroll away and back. 3. A colleague gives me a Word doc with mixed size text, I paste into my doc, and it goes all 12 point. I give them a doc with mixed text size and they get all 12 point when they open it. Ideas? I run Word 2008 on Mac OSX 10.5.8. Something weird happens in only certain documents and only sometimes. I go to type, and the whole document goes grey - just the pages, not the menus or anything, but it obscures all text and document elements. If I just scroll away from that page and scroll back, I get fresh white background again, unless I didn't scroll all the way off of the visible area I was on - that band stays grey until I scroll it out of view and back. It only happens in certain documents and I'm not sure what the unique qualities of those documents are. About as complicated as I get in any Word document is a table, an image, or maybe some headings, and sometimes none of those are involved.

It seems to be related to another weird and more frequent minor problem that also goes away if I scroll. Sometimes I've changed something in a document, like say deleting a couple of sentences. Then I go to type something towards the bottom of the page and it comes out all jumbled. That's when I realize that what I was looking at on the screen was not actually what was supposed to be in that spot. Because in my fumblings and scrollings I then realize it was just remembering what used to be there and is showing me that, but really the removal of a sentence or whatever above there caused everything below it to move up. But not until I scroll away and back will Word let go of its past and show me what has actually shifted into that space now. So the jumble errors are caused by me trying to type into something that's not really there. Instead I type into what's actually there, but which I can't see until I mess it up. How can I get it to stop that?

Both of those are odd behaviors that plague me in certain documents. The grey page thing is semi-regular, but the phantom memory image thing happens in every document. I keep my OS and software up to date automatically, but this problem has been happening for a couple of years. When I research it, I mostly find problems about the grey screen of death or when the whole Word interface goes grey, not just the white pages. Haven't found my particular problem in the forums.

Bonus question: My colleagues and I collaborate on documents. Sometimes somebody will give me something that has text in different sizes and I can see that when I open it on my screen, but when I paste from their document into mine, it all goes 12pt. Likewise when I have stuff in mixed sizes and send it to one of them, they get all 12pt when they open it. They never see my other sizes. Any clues?