>>What might tell us if it is a glitch that won't go away, or a downside to the newer version is this: Select all of the document, then paste it in a new document and save it with a new name. Are the file sizes the same?
>
>Almost the same size (went down from 628 KB to 622 KB).

So, it appears to be a downside of the newer version of Word. Maybe it's just one feature of word that is less efficient. I don't know if you have a table in your document, but as an example. Maybe Word docs without a table don't do this. If there isn't a table, maybe it's some other feature. Just some thoughts.