Turn math autocorrect back on in Microsoft Word for Mac 2011

Question

I was using Microsoft Word for Mac 2011 Version 14.7.3 (170325) on macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 to edit formulas when suddenly the math autocorrect stopped working. So, for example, when in a formula block, typing 1/2 followed by a space would turn 1/2 into a fraction, or typing x^2 followed by a space would result in an x with a superscript 2, but that all stopped working.

I tried to save the file I was working in in order to restart Word, which resulted in Word crashing. When I reopened Word, math autocorrect was still not working.

The next place I looked was in the Word menu's Preferences. In the Word Preferences window, I selected Equations and made sure that Automatically covert expressions to professional format as you type was checked. It was when I first looked, and I tried checking, unchecking, restarting Word while checked/unchecked, but nothing fixed the problem.

I didn't see any other preferences there that would be relevant, so I clicked the Math AutoCorrect… button, which takes you to the AutoCorrect preference pane's Math AutoCorrect tab. Both Automatically correct spelling and formatting as you type above the tabs and Replace text as you type within the Math AutoCorrect tab where checked. I tried variously checking/unchecking and restarting with these preferences, but to no avail.

I can still access all the same formula elements from the Equation Tools ribbon, and they all seem to work just fine; it's just that I now need to point and click through formula menus in the ribbon, which is much slower than just typing with autocorrect.

Anyone have any idea how to get this working again?

Answer 1

I was going to try to reinstall Word to see if that would fix the issue when I noticed that there was an available update (despite autoupdate being checked on, which may be indicative of a more general issue with checked preferences not functioning appropriately).

After updating to Microsoft Word for Mac 14.7.7 (170905) from the Help menu's Check for Updates, the math autocorrect began working again.