Strange graphical glitches in Outlook, Word and Excel

My coworker is experiencing strange graphical glitches while using Outlook, Word and Excel:

• When she is composing an email in Outlook and she types in the body of the message, the text often appears in the toolbar as well. There is a slight delay, so the text up top is usually a few characters behind what she types.
• When she is selecting cells in Excel, selected cells with thick borders appear in the toolbar and in other cells. Sometimes these cells are behind the toolbar buttons, and other times they're in front.
• Minimizing the applications will make the glitches disappear, but they reappear as soon as she starts typing or selecting cells again.
• The problem occurs intermittently. Sometimes she'll go hours without experiencing it.
• I have swapped her VGA cable and her monitor, but the problem persists.
• She has an Intel integrated video card with the latest drivers. I tried rolling back the drivers.
• She has been using the same computer for a long time, and didn't experience these issues until recently, after switching offices.

Here's a screenshot of Outlook and Excel glitching out. The solid black boxes were added by me to cover up private info.

Any help would be appreciated. This problem has me stumped. Since it only affects three Microsoft applications, maybe it's an issue with how they render graphics?

2 Answers

As DavidPostill suggested, repairing Microsoft Office resolved the problem.

To find instructions on how to do so, please follow this link: Repair an Office application

Instructions for Windows 10

The steps are a bit different for older versions of Windows

1. Right-click the Start button and select Programs and Features on the pop-up menu.

2. Right-click the Microsoft Office product you want to repair, and select Change.

   • NOTE: If you have a suite such as Office 365 Home or Office Home and Student 2013 or 2016, search for the suite name, even if it's just a particular application you want to repair such as Word or Excel. If you have a standalone application such as Word or Excel, search for the application name.

3. From the "How would you like to repair your Office Programs" screen, select Online Repair to make sure everything gets fixed, and then select Repair. The Quick Repair option is also available, which runs faster but only detects and then replaces corrupted files.

   • NOTE: If your copy of Office is MSI-based, select Repair and then click Continue. If you need help figuring out if your Office is Click-to-Run or MSI-based, follow these steps below.
   • Open an Office application, such as Outlook or Word.
   • Go to File > Account or Office Account.
   • If you see an "Update Options" item, you have a Click-to-Run installation. If you don't see the "Update Options" item, you have an MSI-based install.

4. Follow the instructions on the screen to complete.

I got similar issues with Outlook. I upgraded 2010 Office to 2019. I could not type message because artifacts were showing everywhere. It turned out it was a fault of email signature and an image that was there. After removing the image it works just fine! If removing image won't work, try retype the signature without any formatting.