Word 2004: ‘Change’ command in spell checker causes tab character to disappear

Posted by Pierre Igot in: Macintosh
September 15th, 2004 • 6:39 am

Now here’s a bug to savour, because only Microsoft could come up with such insanity.

Take a look at the following paragraph of text:

Bug in Word's spell checker

There are two things to note about it. One is that it contains a spelling mistake, with rix that should actually read riz. (I’m only human.)

The other one is that it’s a paragraph formatted with a left indent and a negative first-line indent, in order to create a bullet-list type of effect (the bullet being followed by a tab character, as can be seen in the image).

When I check this paragraph with Word’s spell checker, it correctly flags rix as an error. But it is unable to suggest the correct spelling. So I correct the error right there in the spell checker dialog box and click on the “Change” button.

What does Word do? Well, it makes the change alright. But it also deletes the tab character after the bullet at the beginning of the paragraph!

Can you believe this? As I said, only Microsoft could have come up with such a bug.


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