Microsoft Word might be one of the foremost word processing tools around, but that doesn’t mean it’s of peerless quality. Ask anyone who has to use the application on a regular basis and there’s a good chance they’ll regale you with horror stories of the various foibles, flaws, and bugs that they have to deal with – all of which send their productivity through the floor and inspire in them the urge to put their fist through their screen.

Here’s a few of the more common issues in Word, and how to deal with them accordingly. Note that this is guide is geared towards people using Word 2010.

Issue 1: Horizontal lines that won’t go away

Sometimes, for reasons unbeknownst to the user, Word will decide to plop a horizontal line into a document often right into the middle of your work. This may be an issue that occurs when copying content from a web-page, though there’s a chance it’ll happen through no action of the user.

The cause is irrelevant – it’s the solution that’s important. Simply select the line and the area around it (one or two spaces on either end) and go to Format->Borders and Shading. Select the “none” option and the line should vanish.

Issue 2: Weird auto-formatting

For whatever reason, Word’s automatically formatting things in a way that you most assuredly don’t want it to. Maybe changing a single segment of a paragraph formats the whole document. Maybe certain words are changed into other words, or Word simply refuses to co-operate when setting up a numbered list. Unfortunately, this is probably the toughest issue to solve, since there’s a different reason for each formatting concern.

For this, all I can recommend is to look at Word’s auto-correct options accessed by opening the drop down menu next to the “undo” and “redo” buttons, selecting “more commands” then going to the “proofing” segment of the window that pops up. If all else fails, you can simply turn off auto-correct and automatic formatting for the time being. Unfortunately, you’re going to need to do this by looking in the aforementioned menu and unchecking everything you don’t want Word to do.

Issue 3: Disappearing graphics

Sometimes, your pictures will disappear and it most commonly happens with images copied and pasted from the web. There’s a few reasons for this. Maybe you inadvertently dragged the image off the edge of the screen, or it could be that for some reason, Word’s not properly applying paragraph wrapping to your picture.

First things first, check under “Advanced Options” in the “More Commands” section of the drop-down menu described in Issue 2, to make sure you haven’t somehow enabled the option to “Display Picture Placeholders”. Next, check to see if your image is in line with text (if it’s wrapped, you’ll need to enable this option to see it) or in front of/behind text. Finally, try saving it and inserting it, if you added it from a website.

Issue 4: Random, unexplained spaces and blanks

Another seemingly random glitch. Sometimes it occurs when you justify a paragraph. Sometimes, it just occurs when you’re typing.

To deal with this problem, simply set Word to display invisible characters (such as indents, page breaks, and paragraph spacing). Click the button that looks like a backwards “P,” next to the style menu on the “Home” tab. Look at your random indents and spaces and delete anything you see there. If that still doesn’t work, go to “View” and click “Ruler” to see if there are any tabs you missed.

Issue 5: Startup woes

Finally, Word might occasionally refuse to start up properly. This might be a problem with your installation or it might be that an add-on is causing the issue. If you can start Word up, see if there are any add-ons running (again, it’s in the “Additional Commands” menu.)  Disable them and try restarting.

If that doesn’t work, try running the Microsoft Fixit utility to see if it can work out the issue and repair it. If all else fails, you might just have to reinstall.

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