How to change Word 'undo' behavior to not be character-by-character?

If I type something in Microsoft Word 2016, then press Undo (ctrl+z), it 'undo's what I typed, one character at a time. This is not normal, and is quite frustrating. Normal behaviour is to undo the last word or sentence. So if I want to undo a whole paragraph, I either have to press and hold Undo and risk going too far, or press Undo a million times.

This chap seems to have the opposite problem, but that's of no help to me.

Searching the Web, I came across two potential solutions: disable Overtype mode (it's in Insert mode already), or turn off page numbers (doesn't work).

Apart from reinstalling Office, what do I have to do to get the normal Undo behaviour back?

Solution 1:

According to this answer on Microsoft Community and this forum at PC Review if you remove page numbers and overtyping, it changes the behaviour of the undo command.

Microsoft Answer:

In an existing file (.docx), toggling between insert and overtype is not always an option (even if its activated via options). In these instances, they only way to change the behaviour is to remove the page numbers at either the bottom or top of the page (after which the behaviour switches from undo by character to the desired undo by word). Curiously, after deleting the page numbers, the ability to toggle between insert and overtype is now possible.

PC Review Answer:

I may have stumbled upon the cause of this annoying behavior. Apparently when in "Overwrite" mode, keystrokes are taken as unique actions since they typically replace one letter with another. When typing at the end of a paragraph, the following paragraph is not overwritten; however, the keystrokes are still undone one at a time. To change the behavior, double-click "OVR" in the status bar or press the Insert key on the keyboard. This will toggle Overwrite mode between on and off. When it is off, the "OVR" will be greyed out and you will be able to undo whole blocks of text as one action.

I can replicate the issue by both enabling Overtyping and inserting page numbers. So perhaps try disabling both:

To disable page numbers: Click the Insert tab at the top, followed by Page Number in the Header & Footer section, then click Remove Page Numbers.

To disable Overtyping: Click File, then Options, then Advanced. Locate the Use Overtype Mode checkbox and ensure this is not selected. Furthermore, you can disable the Insert key to activate it by unchecking the box above.

Hope this helps somewhat.

EDIT: Just noticed you have Overtype and page numbers disabled already. I believe you can hold down the undo keys to remove single keys faster, but other than that I'll continue to search. Will update answer once I find something.