Word crashes or hangs constantly

[marcs]

Version: v.X
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
Processor: Power PC

Hello,
Just today, I started having severe problems with my Word program. It is constantly either crashing or hanging (not responding and I must kill it with Force Quit). I did not do any software upgrades or other changes that may have caused this problem.

I read up a bit and realized I was way down in terms of recent upgrades, so I installed the latest and am running now at 10.1.9.

This behavior has repeated on various (large) fies I have opened, so it isn't confined to just one doc file. I do not seem to be having any problems with Excel.

I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions.
Thanks in advance,
Marc

 

[CyberTaz]

Did you repair disk permissions & restart the Mac after upgrading to 10.1.9?

Is the program crashing on launch? Crashing while in use? Crashing on Save?
Crashing on Quit?

Is it happening if you create a new blank file & work in it? How about in
'smaller' files or files other than the ones you mentioned?

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[marcs]

Hi Bob,
Thanks for taking the time to help.

I did repair disk permissions and restart the Mac after upgrading. I also verified my disk and it showed no problems.

The program is only crashing when in use, not at start-up. when saving or quitting. It is also hanging (spinning ball icon). Sometimes I'm not even doing anything, have left the wiondow and when I return, it is hung.

This morning I have had success in opening a new file and working in it without problems so far.

I'll certainly appreciate any ideas you can throw my way.
Thanks again.
Marc

________

 

[CyberTaz]

What is your exact update level of OS X? If it isn't at 10.4.11 that may be
a factor as well. Crashes while in use are typically update or permissions
related. I'm afraid I can't fully interpret the 2nd paragraph of your reply,
so I'm still not sure exactly when the problem occurs.

If those aren't the issues & the problem only occurs with certain documents
the next most likely cause is that the documents are at least to some degree
corrupt. Have a look at this page & try Procedure #2 on one of the problem
documents: http://word.mvps.org/Mac/DocumentCorruption.html

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Diane Ross]

I'll certainly appreciate any ideas you can throw my way.

Try trashing your font caches.

Font Nuke and Font Finagler are two good ones to check out.

Testing in a new User will quickly tell you if the problem is system wide or
if it¹s your User¹s folder that contains the problem.

 

[marcs]

Hello Diane, Bob,
Thanks for your additional help.

I did try FontNuke and it did not fix my problem.

My system is running at 10.4.11. Word was only crashing while it was running. It did not crash when starting, saving or quitting.

After further testing, the problems seems to be confined to two large files. I confirmed that by emailing one of the docs to a different system where it also crashed/hung. So I followed the procedures outlined in the Document Corruption page Bob recommended. This involved saving as "Web Page" then opening and re-saving as a doc. This worked fine for one file and that issue is fixed. Thanks!

However, the other file consistently hangs or crashes halfway through the save as a "Web Page", and cannot complete. I have tried copying hunks of the file so I might paste it elsewhere, but the Word hangs when I do this.

So is there any other procedure whereby I might salvage all of the data from this file?

Thanks again for any help.
Yours, Marc

 

[CyberTaz]

Glad you're partially there! Try this for the remaining problem document:

Hold Shift while you launch Word, then open the file using the File> Open
command from the menu. If Track Changes is turned on or if the file contains
tracked changes that haven't been resolved, turn Track Changes off & Accept
or Reject all changes, then save the file.

Turn on the non-printing characters (¶) then try Procedure #2 by executing
the following keystrokes;

Command+A (Select All)
Shift+Left Arrow (to deselect the last ¶)
Command+C

Close the file, then paste into a new blank document. Save the file & see if
it performs better than the old copy. If not you may have better luck with
Procedure #4. Keep in mind that the most likely locations for the corruption
are tables & section breaks.

If neither option gives you a workable document there are 2 remaining
methods of "last resort". If you can get a copy of the file to a Window PC
running Word 2003 or 2007 you can try the features there to repair the
file... 2007 in particular is more well equipped to do so than the Mac
versions of Word. The second is to open the file using the Recover Text from
Any File item from the Enable list in the Open dialog.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[marcs]

Hi Bob,
Thanks again. I had no luck with the first trick of trying to copy without the last paragraph. The document just hangs almost immediately. The Word 2007 option isn't practical for me just now, so I bit the bullet and used the "Recover Text" option.

Though I lost all the formatting (groan!), at least I recovered the words. So after a bunch of grunt formatting, I'll be back in business. Thank you so much for sticking with me throughout. I am grateful.

One last question if you please? What does opening Word with the shift key pressed accomplish. It didn't seem to operate any differently.

Thanks again.
Marc

 

[CyberTaz]

In this case it was just a proverbial clutch at the ever-elusive straw
It launches the app in "Safe" mode bypassing your existing Preference files.
Typically a part of troubleshooting.

Sorry we couldn't do better, but at least you don't have to retype the
document. If the original isn't sensitve content you can send me a copy &
I'll try to figure out what went sour. Let me know.

 

[marcs]

Hi Bob,
Thanks for the offer to work on my file. That is especially kind. However the file isn't something that can be shared (proprietary info), so I'll just finish up the extra formatting.
Yours, Marc