macOS Sonoma and issues with MS Word 365 for Mac

Hi everyone,

I just downloaded Sonoma 14.1. It's available to everyone. The problem is fixed! Solid bullets appear as they should in Word in Print Preview as well as when printed. Same for pdfs.

The Microsoft Community forum was the one that alerted me to the fix today.

I’ve noticed that only happens when insert solid black Bullets, because I’ve changed it for solid black boxes, And white bullets (pretty similar in size to the black solid bullet points) and it let me print it with no issues. Looks like only Black solid bullets have that issues in Word 16.78

Anyone else have tried with another symbols? Or another options?

Update: I’ve Changed the bullet form “Symbols” to “Wingdings” font and it Works. Looks like the issue is Just with that “Symbols” black solid bullets.

I found a workaround! If you select all of your bulleted sections, go up to the bullets section on the Home ribbon, then select Define New Bullet, go to Bullet, select Arial, then select the bullet symbol in that Font section, and OK, that does preserve your bullet points when you save as a PDF. You may need to adjust the size to 14pt. in Arial to get the same size bullet as before. 

Thank you!! Updating to Word 16.78 fixed it for me. Solid round bullets are now appearing on converted pdfs and printouts.

Microsoft uses different version numbering schemes for their applications on Mac and Windows. That can be confusing. What you can do to circumvent the current messed up bullet printing is to click the Bullets tool on the Ribbon bar and Define New Bullet… Choose a new Font — some have used Arial, and I believe that Bookshelf Symbol 7 will also suffice. Then use the custom bullet.

Like Richard in NYC and RichardGoold, I used the same workaround: Send your Word file to any computer that doesn't use Sonoma 14.0.

So I sent my Word document with all the bullets (and there were lots because it was a business report) via email to my HP PC, which is on the same home network as my Mac. It runs Windows 11 V22H2.

I downloaded the document to the PC and printed it out. Bullets were intact. I used the PC to email the file to the people waiting for it.

[Edited by Moderator]

Same issue. Luckily, I still had another device I hadn't upgraded yet.

I had to send the Word document from my iMac (Sonoma) to my MacBook Pro (Ventura.) Once opened on the Ventura device, I was able to save to PDF with the bullet points preserved properly, and not converting to square boxes.

Hi VikingOSX,

Thank you for your attention to this issue. I wish I understood what a "Terminal lp command" was so I could duplicate what you did, but I'm just not that tech-savvy.

I do understand that while you got solid round bullets to print to your AirPrint laser printer in one case, Word 16.78 still has problems printing those in other cases.

I do have Word 16.78 on my Mac (running Sonoma 14.0). I have not idea how to find the Word version on my PC (with an Office 365 subscription). The Product Information menu simply says Version 2309, last updated Oct. 10 2023.

In any case, I still see open squares in Word's Print Preview on my Mac when they should be solid bullets. Same for previews of PDFs. But if I email the same document to myself, download it to my PC's desktop, reopen it in Word and print it from the PC to my HP printer, the solid bullets reappear.

The best forum for Word problems is at

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_word-msoffice_unknown-mso_OPMac?sort=LastReplyDate&dir=Desc&tab=All&status=all&mod=&modAge=&advFil=&postedAfter=&postedBefore=&threadType=all&isFilterExpanded=true&page=1

It's possible Word needs further updating to fit Sonoma.

I have found a fix for this as i am using a Macbook Pro 2009 running Ventura With OCLP.

First remove all microsoft office apps

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/uninstall-office-for-mac-eefa1199-5b58-43af-8a3d-b73dc1a8cae3

Download Microsoft Office 2019 and install it

Now go to microsoft website and download the 16.43 update for word, excel, powerpoint

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/update-history-office-for-mac

Make sure to disable automatic updates for microsoft office, any newer version will break office

Big-sir-yes-sir wrote:

Does not work for me. Why hasn't Apple sorted this....?

Do the Symbol font bullets print correctly from Pages?

Word 16.78 also has the Bookshelf Symbol 7 font for this purpose too.

Go to your accessibility settings and make sure that Full Keyboard Access is OFF

Apple is not responsible for fixing Microsoft applications and your best hope is Microsoft is proactive and fixes this issue with the 16.79 update. Only Microsoft knows this fix timeline though.