word 2003 crashes cant open certain documents

[Student]

i have the student edition of office 2003, there are two word documents that
word freezes and wont open. i can open these in wordpad and notepad, but word
either freezes and then restarts if i tell it to recover them they come up
blank, if i turn of norton, they come up blank but tellme at the bottom of
the page that there are 2000 or so characters. also the pages dont show the
flashing sign for inserting text. I tested the docs by sending them to a
relative also running office 2003 word and they opened fine. ive turned of
alternate imput and disabled norton. Im using xp professional, on a brand new
viao labtop, i have no idea what to do. (also ive updated office and xppro
with every update available online.)

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

Usual suspects are a) corrupted normal.dot, b) corrupted registry entries,
or c) ill-behaved add-in or global template. Take a look here for steps that
usually resolve this kind of issue:

http://www.officearticles.com/word/steps_to_troubleshooting_microsoft_word.htm

 

[Tom Ferguson]

Locate the normal template on your computer and rename it normal.do$ or
similar. Open Word. Try to open your document.

If no joy:
Ask your relative to open the documents in word and immediately save them
under a different name as Rich Text Format *.rtf and send them back to
you. Try to open those.

If still no joy, let us know the Windows and Word versions used by the
computer that created the documents.

Tom
MSMVP
Windows Shell/User


:i have the student edition of office 2003, there are two word documents
that
: word freezes and wont open. i can open these in wordpad and notepad, but
word
: either freezes and then restarts if i tell it to recover them they come
up
: blank, if i turn of norton, they come up blank but tellme at the bottom
of
: the page that there are 2000 or so characters. also the pages dont show
the
: flashing sign for inserting text. I tested the docs by sending them to a
: relative also running office 2003 word and they opened fine. ive turned
of
: alternate imput and disabled norton. Im using xp professional, on a
brand new
: viao labtop, i have no idea what to do. (also ive updated office and
xppro
: with every update available online.)

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

In addition to the suggestions offered by Herb and Tom, have you tried using
the Open and Repair option?