Word repaginates continuously

[David Hazel]

Since late this afternoon, my Word software has developed a problem whereby
it continually repaginates some of my documents (not all, just some). I have
observed the problem in documents derived from three different template files
(none of them Normal.dot), and the problem is in multiple documents, not just
in one or two. In the documents that show the problem, if I switch to Normal
View (I usually work in Page Layout View), the page number shows correctly
initially, and then changes to say "Page 0 Sec 1 1/1", as if the document
was on both page 0 and page 1 of 1.

Other symptoms:
- When I first load one of the offending documents, it initially shows I'm
on page 1 of 2 (these are documents with multiple pages, mostly in the
hundreds), and remains like that.
- If I Page Down, the page count begins to go up, as if Word is repaginating
- After a few seconds, the page counting re-starts
- It then begins to repaginate rapidly, showing "Word is repaginating x.doc,
page n. Press Esc to cancel." (I do not normally get this message while
repagination is occurring).
- The only template file that has changed today is Normal.dot. None of the
other templates from which these documents are derived have changed recently
(going by their Modified dates).

I have tried:
- Deleting Normal.dot and making Word re-create it
- Restoring Normal.dot from a backup copy from yesterday evening (before the
problem manifested itself)
- Repairing my Office installation

I have found articles about troubleshooting damaged Word documents, but I am
not yet convinced that this is my problem, given all of the above (I hadn't
even touched some of these files today until AFTER I first observed the
problem). I have good anti-virus software (Command AntiVirus), and have
scanned both my templates and the documents showing the error, and have found
no infections (in any case, I am not in the habit of opening attachments in
odd-looking emails).

Can anyone suggest other possible causes of these symptoms?

Is there any software I can use to verify corruption of a Word document? The
procedures outlined in Article 826864 are a bit hit and miss, and that
article doesn't even say what it means by instruction 1: "Look for similar
behaviour in other documents". Okay, yes, I've looked and found it. WHAT DOES
THAT MEAN??? Does it mean I DON'T have corruption or that I DO? I have not
found similar behaviour in other software. Again, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN??? The
article is a bit of a chocolate teapot in this respect. I also don't have an
"Open and Repair" option on my Open dialog box, so the first suggested remedy
doesn't even look possible.

 

[Anne Troy]

I've yet to hear the cause of this, but I've successfully gotten rid of the
problem in two documents (that I can remember, at least) using my
troubleshooting methods.
http://www.officearticles.com/word/recover_a_corrupt_microsoft_word_document.htm

*******************
~Anne Troy

www.OfficeArticles.com
www.MyExpertsOnline.com

 

[David Hazel]

Anne,

Thanks for the pointer. The link you gave me said much the same thing as the
two previous articles I had found, but much more concisely. The RTF method
seems to have worked, but I'm still not convinced it was file corruption. One
of the files I've just recovered was set read-only, and was like that before
I experienced the problem with it. At no time did I try re-saving it after it
showed problems, and its template has not changed in some while. So I can't
see how any corruption could have crept into it from yesterday's problem.

I want to add one more thing about Normal.dot: even with the "Prompt to save
Normal template" option selected, I am finding the "modified" date on
Normal.dot changes without me being prompted to save changes to it. So Word
does appear to overwrite something in here, even if it isn't telling me so.
This was the reason I focussed my efforts on fixing that file and on making
sure Word itself wasn't corrupt. I can't see any other point of commonality
between the files that were showing the problem (one of them I hadn't touched
in a few weeks, and I wasn't the last person to edit it anyway).

 

[Anne Troy]

Thanks for the kind words about my article, Dave. A lot of people tell me
they didn't understand until I explained it, which is one of the reasons for
that website.

I'm totally thrown about your normal.dot being changed without you being
prompted. I've never heard of such a thing. But admittedly, I haven't had
the "prompt to save" on for years...not since email viruses became much more
popular than Word viruses ever were.

And keep in mind...just because a file doesn't reveal the symptoms of
corruption to you, doesn't mean it's not corrupt. Just like a cold, we don't
know we have it until we feel the symptoms, and we know we caught it hours
before that.

*******************
~Anne Troy

www.OfficeArticles.com
www.MyExpertsOnline.com

 

[David Hazel]

Anne,

I understand what you're saying about when the corruption might have
occurred, but it's the widespread nature of it that makes me wonder if it
really is corruption of a particular document or template. The only such file
that is common to all of the documents that were showing the problem is
Normal.dot, and I took 2 different routes to remove that from the equation
yesterday (forcing Word to create a new one, and restoring it from a backup
copy). The only other common link is Word itself - I suspect that either a
setting somewhere got changed without me realising, or else something else
got overwritten. The problem seemed to start very shortly after I copied some
text out of a web page and pasted it into the document I was working on. But
I have no idea how such an action might have caused a problem - it was only a
few words I copied, and my PC has 768MB of RAM, so lack of resources
shouldn't have been a problem. I use Word very extensively, and would have
noticed the problem if it had occurred before this.

 

[Tracy]

What is the nature of the content of these documents (e.g., long tables,
graphics, etc.)?

 

[David Hazel]

Most of the affected documents are manuscripts for stories which I write in
my spare time, so their structure is very simple (chapter headings and text,
all in 12-point Courier New font). One, however, was a business document
which has a few embedded tables and a company logo (graphics) on the first
page. I also, this evening, came across some symptoms of the problem with a
business letter I had written a month or so ago (also containing a logo). So
there is no common factor, really, other than Normal.dot and Word itself. For
what it's worth, saving the document as RTF and then re-loading and re-saving
in Word format seems to fix the problem. Which only adds to the mystery, as
far as I'm concerned, because the end result is still using the same template
as the version I start with. I really can't believe that ALL of these
documents suddenly became corrupted at the same time yesterday.

I could almost believe there is malicious software at work here, except I
have done a full scan of my system with Command AntiVirus (finding no
infections), and I also scanned with PestPatrol (still nothing). My
anti-virus software is bang up-to-date, as it is set to automatically update
itself (and, in fact, it updated this morning before I did the scan).

 

[David Hazel]

Found it!

It's nothing to do with corruption of documents, it's to do with the "Save
preview picture" option in the document Properties. I had this enabled for
all of the documents that were showing the problem (the missing common factor
between them). When I tried the RTF route to fixing the supposed corruption
(save as RTF, reload and re-save as DOC), this flag got cleared. Yesterday, I
noticed that this flag was clear on one of the documents I had "rescued", and
I re-enabled it when I saved one of the documents after editing it. Today I
reloaded that same document and it was showing the symptoms I noticed last
week. On a hunch, I went into Properties and cleared the flag - and the
problem disappered instantly!

The question is, what happened last week to make this become a problem? I
have been running with this particular option enabled for a long time now on
all my documents, and it has never caused a problem until 30th June when I
reported the problem here. I am using Word 2000 (version 9.0.6926 SP-3). I
have my Windows 2000 system set up to automatically download updates, and I
tend to let it install such updates whenever it tells me there are some
waiting. I can't remember if I've recently installed any recommended Office
updates, but I may have done. The obvious suspicion is that one of these
updates has caused the problem.

Maybe it's worth adding this "solution" to your list of troubleshooting
methods: if the "Save preview picture" option is enabled, try disabling it as
a first step.

 

[David Hazel]

Tracy,

You may be interested in reading the reply I've made to this thread today.
It seems to be a problem with the "Save preview picture" option in document
Properties. Clearing this flag seems to fix the problem.

 

[Anne Troy]

Doin' it right now, Dave.
*******************
~Anne Troy

www.OfficeArticles.com
www.MyExpertsOnline.com

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

For more on preview pictures (which are known causes of problems), see
http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/PreviewPicture.htm