Hi Ed G,

I am an independent advisor, trying to help other users in the Community with my experience in Microsoft products. Please note that I am a user like you and don't work directly for Microsoft.

There are a few options that may resolve the issue.

Word and Google Docs use different underlying technologies for rendering and formatting documents. When you upload a Word document to Google Docs, the conversion process attempts to maintain formatting, but it may not always be perfect. Similarly, when you download a Google Docs file back to Word, some formatting adjustments might occur.

Preserving Formatting: To minimize formatting discrepancies, follow these steps: a. From Google Docs to Word: - Open the document in Google Docs. - Click File -> Download -> Microsoft Word (.docx). - Save the downloaded file. - Open it in Microsoft Word to check if the formatting aligns with your original Word document. b. From Word to Google Docs: - Open the Word document. - Customize the formatting (font, line spacing, etc.) as desired. - Highlight the text with the new formatting. - Click Format -> Paragraph Styles -> Normal Text -> Update ‘Normal Text’ to Match. - Save this style as your default. - Similarly, customize and save the default heading style.

Offline Mode (Google Docs): Enabling offline mode in Google Docs ensures that your work remains in the original file format (e.g., DOCX) rather than converting it to a Google Doc. To enable offline mode: Open Google Docs while online. Click Menu -> Settings. Toggle Offline and ensure Sync Google Docs, Sheets, Slides & Drawings files to this computer is checked.

I would appreciate your feedback.

Kindly note that this is a user-to-user forum, we are users helping other users, we aren't Microsoft employees and neither are we Microsoft agents.

Best regards, Amadeusz