Word 2002 crashes on spellcheck edit

[Christopher J. Mackie]

Spellchecking long documents in WordXP (10.4524.4219) SP2, I repeatedly
experience the same problem:
--I attempt to edit a misspelling in the text window, and apply via 'Change
All'.
--Word tells me that I can't use change-all, b/c I edited outside the
misspelled text. Sometimes this is true; sometimes not. Sometimes editing
the leading or trailing character triggers the message; sometimes not. I've
been trying to figure out the algorithm, but no luck yet.
--I accept the correction and select only 'Change' instead
--Word processes the change and moves to the next error, but displays the
next error oddly: the actual error is not colored and sometimes not even
visible in the text window. Moreover, the Suggestions box is not
selectable, and the Change and Change All buttons are grayed out, as if the
change has already been applied.
--About 1/2 the time, clicking Undo Edit will fix the problem--the error
redisplays in color and the proper command buttons activate. The other 1/2
the time, Word crashes hard (i.e., a message to MS and 'recover
documents'--it recovers gracefully enough, though). On some occasions, even
if the problem appears to resolve successfully, Word will crash without
obvious cause a few seconds afterward.

This has happened more than 100 times over more than 5 different documents.
I've repaired Word, checked for updates, cleaned out tempfiles, and done
everything else I can think of. The docs started out as (Windows)textfiles,
but this happens even if I save them as Word docs. I think it's a bug, but
I didn't see it in the KB. Anyone able to suggest a way to avoid this? I'm
spellchecking transcripts of recordings, so there's a lot of hand-editing
required, and the crashes and weird behavior are really slowing me down.

Tx, --Chris Mackie

 

[Mike Williams [MVP]]

Spellchecking long documents in WordXP (10.4524.4219) SP2, I
repeatedly experience the same problem:
--I attempt to edit a misspelling in the text window, and apply via
'Change All'.
--Word tells me that I can't use change-all, b/c I edited outside the
misspelled text. Sometimes this is true; sometimes not. Sometimes
editing the leading or trailing character triggers the message;
sometimes not. I've been trying to figure out the algorithm, but no
luck yet.
--I accept the correction and select only 'Change' instead
--Word processes the change and moves to the next error, but displays
the next error oddly: the actual error is not colored and sometimes
not even visible in the text window. Moreover, the Suggestions box
is not selectable, and the Change and Change All buttons are grayed
out, as if the change has already been applied.
--About 1/2 the time, clicking Undo Edit will fix the problem--the
error redisplays in color and the proper command buttons activate.
The other 1/2 the time, Word crashes hard (i.e., a message to MS and
'recover documents'--it recovers gracefully enough, though). On some
occasions, even if the problem appears to resolve successfully, Word
will crash without obvious cause a few seconds afterward.

Someone reported a similar problem a few months back but I don't we ever
resolved the issue, in which case I generally point folks towards Microsoft
Product support.

Some questions and things to try:
1. Do you get the same problem when editing these documents on a different
PC?
2. Have you tried updating the video display driver?
3. Have you tried replacing your speller custom dictionary? Corruption in
those files may show up as an error elsewhere in the process.
--

Mike Williams - Office MVP
http://www.mvps.org/

Please respond in the same thread on this newsgroup. Make sure you
include details of your application and Windows versions, plus any
service pack updates.

Do not mail to me directly without invitation - you have a choice of
getting ignored or billed for my time. Most questions can be answered
by reading recent NG posts, checking the MVPS web FAQs or searching the
relevant Google archive e.g.
http://groups.google.com/groups?group=microsoft.public.word.spelling.grammar

 

[Christopher J. Mackie]

Thanks Mike; in response to your questions:

1--I hadn't reproduced it on other machines before your question, but I just
did: only took me 3 minutes to reproduce the same crash (by the way, between
my original and your response, I've continued working--six more crashes).
On the second machine, Word didn't recover gracefully at all--it came back
up with no doc and all changes to that point were lost.
2--Can't update the display driver; according to Dell, I've got the current
one.
3--Haven't changed custom dict, but shouldn't item (1) rule that out as the
source of the problem? My profile doesn't roam, so the second machine was
also a new dictionary.

How do I send this to MS Product Support? I searched the MS website, but
the only bug report submission instructions I could find were for Visual
FoxPro. I just want to email it to them: I don't want to wait on the phone.

Tx, --Chris

 

[Mike Williams [MVP]]

Thanks Mike; in response to your questions:

How do I send this to MS Product Support? I searched the MS website,
but the only bug report submission instructions I could find were for
Visual FoxPro. I just want to email it to them: I don't want to wait
on the phone.

I don't know of any way to email external bug reports. You'll have to engage
in phone support or web support, possibly paying up front.

Go to the support pages here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;[ln];Personalsup , track
through the questions until you get the option for online support.

 

[Beth Melton]

Hi Chris,

What you may want to do is supply us with specific reproduction steps,
include your hardware setup, etc and see if we can also reproduce the
error.

--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

How do I send this to MS Product Support? I searched the MS website, but
the only bug report submission instructions I could find were for Visual
FoxPro. I just want to email it to them: I don't want to wait on

the phone.