How do I turn off automatic formatting in Microsoft Word?

Read the article that everyone's commenting on.
Subscribe to the RSS Feed for comments on this article.

I'm still Struggling! I have microsoft office & I want to turn off the annoying auto numbering.Unfortunately the "tools" option doesn't have an "auto correct" option. Can you help?

open MS word, click open, select "document templates" in files of type. select the style you would like to change (e.g. Normal.dot). after opening the file, go to format>styles and formatting, click the dropdown menu on the style you want to change (eg. Normal), then select modify. in the pop-up, untick "automatically update". click "ok". then save the .dot file you opened. this should change the settings of the style you're having a problem with.

I can't seem to find "How to Turn Off Automatic Date" in Word.... Can you help please?? its driving me nuts..

Thank you Nikki. I have Microsoft 2003 and I had the same problem where the whole document would change even though I selected a specific text. I followed ur steps and unchecked the preserve button and the problem stopped. I really appretiate ur feedback.

Thank you, thank you, thank you David (Jan 11, 2009). I was going crazy having to ctrl-Z to undo auto formatting every time I reformatted a paragraph. Your fix did the trick!

David's question has gone unanswered so far:

How do you get word to simply put "" around words.

I have to type " and then space.
If I don't do the space A's become Ä, E becomes Ë etc
Posted by: David at September 14, 2005 1:58 AM

This is the behavior when an international keyboard is chosen from Windows. (It doesn't have to do with Word.) Change the keyboard from, for example, "US-International" to "US" and you won't see the behavior anymore. In Windows Vista, you can do this by going to the Control Panel, selecting "Regional and Language Options", and selecting the "Keyboards and Languages" tab. In earlier versions of Windows, I believe you did this by selecting "Keyboard" from the Control Panel, but I'm not positive.

If you have multiple keyboards active, then, under Windows Vista, you can switch between them by clicking on the keyboard icon in the tray bar at the bottom of the screen.

Thanks David, your answer solved my problem. My document was automatically getting wrecked everytime I made a small formatting change.

David, I was howling abuse at my computer on a plane in India every time I hit an ^Z to undo the global effects of my formatting. My neighbors on the plane tried to avoid eye contact. You have made me human again.

To post a comment on "How do I turn off automatic formatting in Microsoft Word?", please return to that article's main page.