Have you tried the trick that I think is referred to as "the Maggie"?

Copy the whole document, minus the final paragraph mark, into a new document. Sometimes that can get rid of funky problems.

Yes, I did that for one of the writers on one file, and I think it helped but the file was still a bit funky.

I was hoping for something more systematic as there are 32 chapters in this book being circulated among the team and reviewers for multiple rounds.

Yeah, it's a cheap trick, but sometimes it works. Sorry I don't have any more concrete suggestions.

No thanks for confirming my first instinct was a reasonable one. I should systematically do that and save as a doc file (docx seems to be part of the issue) from now on.

You could copy the text (minus art) as plain text. Then you could download open office draw or libre office draw (essentially variations on the same thing). Then use the "save as" or "export to" to convert the art to other formats. If a jpeg, png. If a png jpeg (set to lossless). Then pull the converted pictures. Plain text plus all art converted ought to result in fewer problems. It means restoring formatting manually.

Thanks, Typo. Given the nature of this project and the team members involved, I'm not sure that's a viable option, but I will keep it in mind to request of the in-house assistant if it becomes necessary.

Mostly I'm just hoping it's something that is contained to these chapters from this source and not something that will spread to other files.

I doubt it is malware - more a problem with the way the source interacts with word. Hope Doc rather than DocX solves it. You could also use Open Office in spite of the clunky interface compared to word for this one set of documents and just save as doc or docx. The problem is that you would have to examine carefully in word, because in that kind of conversion dormatting can be lost or damanged - expecially headers, footers, footnotes and endnotes. Also problems can occur with table formatting, and graphics sizing and justification. Huh. I'm not sure I'm actually being helpful here.

I'm sure it's something to do with the graphics, and not any kind of malware. My other suggestion would be to leave the graphics out until the last minute, but that's usually not plausible.

Well, that's reassuring anyway.

Does anybody here have a Lynda.com membership that allows you to download exercise files? I could really use the one for Practical & Effective JavaScript if so....