Replace all crashes

[NotThatGuy]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
Processor: Intel

When trying to Replace All in the endnotes of a document, Word crashes. (It says it will start up again with a recovered document, but it never recovers anything.)

Thanks.

 

[John McGhie]

That would be a corrupted end note container in the document property store.

To fix that, carefully Maggie the document:

The Maggie:

1. Create a new blank document
2. Carefully select all of the text in the bad document EXCEPT the last
paragraph mark
3. Copy it.
4. Paste in the new document.
5. Save under a new file name and close all, then re-open.

This technique for de-corrupting is known as "Doing a 'Maggie'", after
Margaret Secara from the TECHWR-L mailing list, who first publicised the
technique.

Hope this helps

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
Processor: Intel

When trying to Replace All in the endnotes of a document, Word crashes. (It
says it will start up again with a recovered document, but it never recovers
anything.)

Thanks.

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[John McGhie]

This is not likely to be the spell-checker, in either language of Word. But
it might be Spell-Catcher, if you are running that.

Is this "one" document, or "any" document? Have you applied Update 12.2.0?

Word does not have an "autosave" ability. I wish it did, I have been asking
for it for ten years. What Word has is an "autorecovery information save".
Which is, as you say, useless.

It does not save the file, it saves the changes to the file. When it tries
to recover, Word opens the original, then applies the changes to it. If it
can't open the original because the original is corrupted, there is nothing
to apply the changes to. So it recovers nothing. As you have discovered.

I suggest that you enable "Always create backup" in Preferences>Save. Then
get into the habit of hitting Command + s every time you pause to think.

This does two things: the first is that it saves a complete other copy of
the document each time you save. The second is that if anything happens to
the original document (e.g. A corruption) you can always simply open the
backup: it is a completely independent file and it is a complete copy of the
document as it was just before the most recent save.

Using this method, the most you can lose is the text you created since you
last stopped to think...

The other benefit is that each time you perform a full save, Word does some
clean-up of the internal code in the document. This makes document
corruption less likely. It does not happen during an autorecover save.

Hope this helps

I have seen this happen as well when trying to underline a word used
throughout a document by using the replace command. I usually have a moment to
save the document. However, shortly thereafter it crashes.
I have been thinking it is related to the auto spell checking and grammar
checking undertaken after such a replacement. I have turned these off in
Word's preferences to see if that helps. Also I have set the autosave to 1
minute so that there is a chance of recovering recent changes.
There has also been an issue with the custom dictionary seen by French users.
Not sure if that effects US users. They suggested deleting it.

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Phillip Jones, C.E.T.]

I haven't had a word crash in so long. But I do remember if word had a
Crash the trash file would suddenly show up with something in it.

If you pulled the file out of the trash and Renamed it then opened it
you would have a copy of your document prior to making the changes.
Often it would work where the original was toast.

 

[NotThatGuy]

Hi John, WEAJD, and CET,

Thank you for your help.

I'll look into the Maggie and see if that works. I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm working on so many documents lately I don't know which two had this problem any more! If it happens again, I'll try this.

BTW, I do control-S *all* the time when I write, and I am using a custom dictionary. It's got tons of entries, so I hope I don't have to trash it!

J

 

[John McGhie]

You don't have to trash your custom dictionary, but if you think that's the
cause you may have to recover it.

1) Open the custom dictionary by choosing Word>Preferences>Spelling and
Grammar>Custom Dictionaries>Edit...

You must open it exactly that way or this won't work...

2) Check the custom dictionary for blank lines.

Turn on your paragraph marks so that you can see what you are doing. You
must remove them ALL, or the dictionary won't work. You can use
Find/Replace to do this: Search for ^p^p and replace with ^p.

3) If there were no blank lines, add and remove a space from the custom
dictionary (we need to force the file to save by marking it as "changed")

4) SAVE the custom dictionary.

5) Turn your spelling back on (it was automatically disabled when you
edited the dictionary).

Cheers

Hi John, WEAJD, and CET,

Thank you for your help.

I'll look into the Maggie and see if that works. I'm embarrassed to admit that
I'm working on so many documents lately I don't know which two had this
problem any more! If it happens again, I'll try this.

BTW, I do control-S *all* the time when I write, and I am using a custom
dictionary. It's got tons of entries, so I hope I don't have to trash it!

J

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]