Track Changes-Compare Documents crash

[Jonathan Duke]

Word 12.2.1
Mac OS X 10.5.8

I've got a pair of documents that I'm trying to compare and
consistently, they will crash Word at the very end of the compare.

Document size for each is <500k. Both are in .doc format.

I tried saving as RTF, then reconstituting as a .doc or .docx, without
luck. I copied all but the last return (or two) into a new document,
then saved those and the compare still crashed.

I finally opened both in Pages, then exported as Word and that worked.

My question is, what can I do, short of opening in Pages and exporting,
to troubleshoot and resolve the problem in the future.

Thanks.

Cheers,
Jon

 

[CyberTaz]

It sounds like there is corruption in one or both of the original documents,
but corruption can be of various natures. Although the method you used
[called a "Maggie"] is one helpful technique it can't cure every type of
corruption. Whatever it was may very well have been caused by something that
Pages ignored when you opened the files so it didn't get saved into the new
versions. That may not always work, either For possible causes & more
methods have a look here;

http://word.mvps.org/mac/DocumentCorruption.html

 

[John McGhie]

Change tracking almost always creates some level of document corruption.

If you compare documents that contain tracked changes, crashes are likely.

It pays to "Accept all changes in document" in each version of the file,
before Comparing. That will usually fix it.

You can certainly try a Maggie, and that's the first thing I would try if
you get a problem.

However, crashes with Tracked Changes often causes "paragraph corruptions",
which a Maggie won't fix.

The method you have discovered, opening in Pages, is one of the simpler ways
of fixing those.

Hope this helps

Word 12.2.1
Mac OS X 10.5.8

I've got a pair of documents that I'm trying to compare and
consistently, they will crash Word at the very end of the compare.

Document size for each is <500k. Both are in .doc format.

I tried saving as RTF, then reconstituting as a .doc or .docx, without
luck. I copied all but the last return (or two) into a new document,
then saved those and the compare still crashed.

I finally opened both in Pages, then exported as Word and that worked.

My question is, what can I do, short of opening in Pages and exporting,
to troubleshoot and resolve the problem in the future.

Thanks.

Cheers,
Jon

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]