Microsoft Word - Bullets not Printing in Sonoma

[ChristoNew]

I found a workaround right in MS Word for those who are creating a PDF. When you choose to Save As a pdf, you get two options. The default for me was "Best for printing", but when I saved with the other method, it printed just fine. I know I'm late in replying, but I hope this helps.
Unfortunately, it doesn't help if you're creating and printing the document without otherwise needing to save in between, and it doesn't help with .docx files that stay in MS Word. Hopefully that will come soon from either MS or Apple, or both!

 

[twomacsminimum]

I just replaced all my bullet points with (•) symbol and adjusted the margins to match previous formatting. It's a smaller bullet point than Word's bullet point but it will to do until they issue a fix with in a future update.

 

[twomacsminimum]

I found a workaround right in MS Word for those who are creating a PDF. When you choose to Save As a pdf, you get two options. The default for me was "Best for printing", but when I saved with the other method, it printed just fine. I know I'm late in replying, but I hope this helps.
Unfortunately, it doesn't help if you're creating and printing the document without otherwise needing to save in between, and it doesn't help with .docx files that stay in MS Word. Hopefully that will come soon from either MS or Apple, or both!
View attachment 2292433

It was worth trying but it changes font and strips my formatting when I print "Best for electronic" so not a solution for me sadly.

 

[Saint_Blaise]

It was worth trying but it changes font and strips my formatting when I print "Best for electronic" so not a solution for me sadly.

In my experience, it also fails ~20% of the time.

 

[aracewell]

Can confirm that this is fixed in Sonoma 14.1 Beta 3. I have Word version 16.79.

 

[BigBag]

I have this empty box/bullet issue in Word, as well, but I just exported a Keynote presentation and had something similar where it's turning capital all of my "I"'s into empty boxes. Not great.

 

[bfreeze]

The MS Word/PDF bullet glitch was making me crazy too. Thanks for the tips here! Sharing what ultimately worked for me in the hopes it can help until MS/Apple gets this fixed.

If you highlight the text you want bulleted, click the bullet option like usual and then Define New Bullet. In the next pop-up window, click Bullet and this will bring up whatever font you're using, including all the options for choosing a bullet style. When I first opened this after the Sonoma update, the "default" was set to the very first option, which is blank. When I changed this to the bullet icon, it was fixed -- the bullets show in MS Word, and they carry over to PDF.

Here are some screenshots.
Step 1:

Step 2:

 

[trav]

Glad I am not alone in this. And now I have a whole bunch of bullets because I kept messing with them to try to find one that worked. How annoying! I even tried uninstalling the Symbols font and reinstalling it. No good. What a strange thing to have broken!

 

[aracewell]

Glad I am not alone in this. And now I have a whole bunch of bullets because I kept messing with them to try to find one that worked. How annoying! I even tried uninstalling the Symbols font and reinstalling it. No good. What a strange thing to have broken!

Just wait a day for the 14.1 update to be released. It looks like it is fixed in the upcoming version.

 

[chribo]

Another workaround:
Open in LibreOffice, correct a few spacings and everything is fine (used for a complex and urgent contract).

Might make you stick with LibreOffice

 

[imageWIS]

I also had this issue and it's insanely frustrating! I ended up changing the black circle bullet points to black squares and that worked. It doesn't look as good, but it's better than nothing. I can't believe MS dropped the ball this much.

 

[NYCValkyrie]

I found a workaround right in MS Word for those who are creating a PDF. When you choose to Save As a pdf, you get two options. The default for me was "Best for printing", but when I saved with the other method, it printed just fine. I know I'm late in replying, but I hope this helps.
Unfortunately, it doesn't help if you're creating and printing the document without otherwise needing to save in between, and it doesn't help with .docx files that stay in MS Word. Hopefully that will come soon from either MS or Apple, or both!
View attachment 2292433

Thanks for this! It worked for me and formatting was intact. I do hope they fix this soon.

 

[mattyroze]

I tried that and it didn't work for me.

This is indeed the way. Here are detailed steps.
-Go to your Word doc.
-Click on bullets, and at the bottom is 'Define New Bullet...' <-- click that.
-There will be a few previously defined bullets showing, and under those buttons that say Font.. Bullet.. Picture... -- click on "Bullet..."
- Pull up a font you use a lot, such as Calibri, and then look at all the characters available to choose, choose the bullet. On my computer it was 5th row, second character from left.
- Hit OK
- Hit OK again.
- Go to PDF print your doc, in preview you will see whether the bullet is now an actual bullet or still the rectangle. if you picked the right shape/character, it will show as bullet.

 

[MacBird]

This is indeed the way. Here are detailed steps.
-Go to your Word doc.
-Click on bullets, and at the bottom is 'Define New Bullet...' <-- click that.
-There will be a few previously defined bullets showing, and under those buttons that say Font.. Bullet.. Picture... -- click on "Bullet..."
- Pull up a font you use a lot, such as Calibri, and then look at all the characters available to choose, choose the bullet. On my computer it was 5th row, second character from left.
- Hit OK
- Hit OK again.
- Go to PDF print your doc, in preview you will see whether the bullet is now an actual bullet or still the rectangle. if you picked the right shape/character, it will show as bullet.

Thanks, fortunately, there is no workaround necessary anymore. Updating to macOS 14.1 fixed the issue.

 

[Bazza1]

Since installation of 14.1 I seemed to have regained bullets / dots again. Not sure whether that's Microsoft finally discovering Sonoma is out or Apple fixed a bit of sillery-buggery within its printing protocols.

 

[usamakarim]

Thanks, fortunately, there is no workaround necessary anymore. Updating to macOS 14.1 fixed the issue.

Since installation of 14.1 I seemed to have regained bullets / dots again. Not sure whether that's Microsoft finally discovering Sonoma is out or Apple fixed a bit of sillery-buggery within its printing protocols.

I can confirm, after updating to 14.1 bullets are displaying again normally. Interesting