Have tables stopped working properly after an update?

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Text disappears from merged cells in a table

Posted on 27 September 2017 by Beaming Support

There is currently an issue within Microsoft Office Word and Outlook 2016, whereby text disappears from merged cells in a table. This happens after installing either of the updates KB4011039 or KB3213656.

These updates were released to improve compatibility and rectify known bugs, and will likely have been installed as part of an automatic update. Some users find that since installing either of these updates, text disappears from merged cells in a table and they are then unable to select the cell to enter anything at all. The same applies for images.  Additionally, upon opening an existing table that contains merged cells, users have found those cells to be blank.

Microsoft have advised that until the next update release (tentatively scheduled for 03/10/17) the only way round this if you really cannot wait a few to wait a few days, is to uninstall the updates.

This can be done by navigating to your installed updates via the control panel. Once you’ve found the relevant update (KB4011039 or KB3213656) you can right click and choose uninstall.

Once uninstalled, you can then hide the update to prevent this from being installed again automatically. To do this, find the update from the available updates and then choose to ‘Hide’ it.

If you are using Windows 10, then in order to hide the updates you will need to install the ‘Show or Hide Updates’ troubleshooter to complete this task which is available here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3073930/how-to-temporarily-prevent-a-driver-update-from-reinstalling-in-window.

This should resolve the issue until the bug is fixed in Microsoft’s next update release.

Read Microsoft’s release here: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/After-installing-KB-3213656-or-KB-4011039-merged-table-cells-don-t-work-correctly-in-Word-or-Outlook-8c7af9eb-9e48-4e1e-8c13-6340ede4acdc?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

 

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