Word 2004 crashes when cutting text

[Jeffrey Weston [MSFT]]

Sorry Tony, I got confused...

When the "Microsoft Error Reporting Program" is enabled in Office 2004,
(i.e. You get the Dialog after a crash that asks you if you want to send the
information to Microsoft), no crash log is stored.

So you'll have to copy & paste the information from the dialog into a text
file.

That's why after you upgraded it stopped dumping crash logs there.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey,

This is amazing. While waiting for your answer I did a search for
"crash" and "word" (visible and invisible) on my hard disk. These are
the files that I have found:

--File 1: size of 1.1 MB last modified on August 14th 2002
/Users/me/Library/Logs/Microsoft Word.crash.log

--File 2: size of 1.1 MB last modified on May 16th 2004
/Users/me/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Microsoft Word.crash.log

I cannot find the crash log file for Word 2004 or for the crashes I had
after May 16th 2004.

Note that on May 16th 2004 I updated from Word 10.1.4 (Office 10.1.5)
to Word 2004 (Office 2004).

I understand that maybe such word crash log file has now other name.
But which? How to find it?

Thanks.

---

Yes, that's it. Or when the Dialog asks if you want to send the information
to Microsoft, you can click "More Information" and copy and paste that to
file and send it to me.

Please also include a description of what you were doing, and we can start
from there. (I might come back and ask you more specific information so the
more you can remember about the "state" of Word when it crashed the better.)

Thanks

-- Jeffrey

Jeffrey,

Thanks for your kind support.

I will send it to you. Just one thing: I understand that you mean the
following file (please, confirm or otherwise let me know the file or
files that you mean):

/Users/me/Library/Logs/Microsoft Word.crash.log

Thanks again,

---
On 2004-09-01 22:43:09 +0200, "Jeffrey Weston [MSFT]"
<[email protected]> said:

Hey Tony, these frequent quits or Crashes that you get, would it be
possible
for you to send me directly the text file of your Crash Log?

It be helpful for us if I could get your crash log and also get a
description of what you were doing at the time Word crashed.

Maybe this way, us on the technical side you on the customer side can
figure
this out together.

You can send the log to my email address: (e-mail address removed)
(without the "online")

Jeffrey Weston
Mac Word Test
Macintosh Business Unit
Microsoft



On 8/30/04 11:39 AM, in article 2004083020395050073%nospam@nospamcom,
"Tony"

Beth,

Thanks.

Update (also to Elliott): I have tested the copy/pasted in the
"original" document but in other system: PowerMac G4/400 with 1 GB RAM
and Word 10.1.4 (Office 10.1.5) on Mac OS X 10.3.5 (Panther). I got
exactly the same as you told me: works fine, but when I save the
document and then close it, Word unexpectedly quits. Right as you said.

Note that both Macs are booted not from the internal drive but from an
external FireWire disk (different for each Mac). In case that may be
relevant.

-

On the other hand, answering to Beth...

I know about selecting manually, but I got the same "nice" crash when I
"Command C" to copy or "Command V" to cut after selecting. The crash is
not fired by the selection but for the copy, cut or paste afterwards.
Besides, it is easier "Shift Command Home" on a 29-page long document.

The table was a plain one-column with about 250 rows. But I rarely use
tables. 99% of my crashes are on documents without tables. Bookmarks
from text copy/pasted from web or eMail pages were also a crash culprit
and I deleted them all using the "Insert/Bookmark" option. But even
with all that fixed crashes continue. You can never be sure with Word.
It crashes at any time (and no other application does it my rock-solid
Mac OS X 10.3.5).

I never had a "disk full" error. On the other hand I rarely use "undo".
Maybe I did it three times in total on that session. Certainly not 60
or near it.

I have "Allow Fast Saves" turned off and, as previously indicated, all
options in the Save preferences are off except "Save preview picture
with new documents". Should I turn them on? I have them off because I
think that is best to avoid problems with Word --I am becoming paranoid
after all this nightmare-- and because I do not want to save every x
minutes but when I want (Command S), which usually is after doing
something on the document that if lost would take me time to recover.

But then, again, this is ludicrous. I have no crash or problem with any
of the dozens of applications (including other words processors) that I
use on Mac OS X 10.3.5. Why with Word? There is something wrong with
Word for sure.

My final suggestion to Microsoft would be to fix this serious problem.
I am experiencing these unexpected quits every day. Perhaps it is
because due to this I "Control S" every few minutes as well. I never
save with any other application except at the end of my work. If I do
with Word it is because it unexpectedly quits in the middle of my work.
And now it seems that frequent savings manually (Command S) can also
corrupt the file, as said by Elliott. This is frustrating. What should
I do then: save or not save manually frequently (Command S). Should I
activate any auto-save or auto-recover option in preferences). I am
lost until Microsoft fixes this.

And I want to thank you all for your kind support. I only with that
Microsoft would listen.

---
On 2004-08-30 20:00:31 +0200, Beth Rosengard
<[email protected]> said:

Hi Guys,

A couple of comments on what's been going on.

Tony, you don't have to use "Shift Command Home" to copy all but the last
paragraph mark. You can do it manually.

Secondly, there's another (better, according to John McGhie) way to
uncorrupt a document in Word 2004 (but not Word X). It involves saving
the
document as a web page. For the exact steps, see here:
<http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/DocumentCorruption.htm>.

Next: In this case, it appears that the corruption existed in the whole
document, but it could have resided just in the table. (Tables,
especially
nested ones, are particularly prone to corruption.) To uncorrupt just a
table, select it and go to Table> Convert> Convert Table to Text and then
immediately, without changing anything, Convert Text to Table again.

On the topic of memory: It sounds to me, Tony, as if you're running into
the 60 Saves bug. Briefly, what happens is that every time you hit Save,
Word has to make a temporary copy of your document as it exists at that
moment so that if you hit Undo, it has a history of all your actions in
the
document. Each time it makes a temporary copy it has to give it a file
handle and Word has a finite number of file handles (approx. 60) it can
use.
When it runs out of file handles, it gives you the memory error ­ which
is
usually expressed as Disk Full.

The simplest way to avoid getting this error is to close and reopen your
document periodically. This wipes out all those temp files. Another
workaround is detailed here:
<http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/DiskFullError.htm>. Now this error is
*supposed* to have been fixed in Word 2004 (as explained in the article).
So either the fix isn't as effective as expected or you're experiencing
something else altogether. (You DO have Allow Fast Saves turned off,
don't
you?)

Hope this helps!

 

[Tony]

Beth,

Many thanks for the comprehensive feedback. I do appreciate your kind support.

1 - The exact error message was (I even have a screen capture of it!):

"There is insufficient memory. Save the document now".

If I did not quit then, eventually Word unexpectedly quitted in the
next seconds or minutes when working with it.

That error was generated when I tried to paste a small piece of text
(about 20 characters or less). Elliott fixed it for me just
copy/pasting all document --except the last carriage return-- into a
new one. I could not do it because I got also a crash when copying such
text. I later on found that I could copy/paste in other Mac with Word
10.1.4 (Office 10.2.5) but when I chose to save and then close the file
Word unexpectedly quitted. Same happened to Elliott, so eventually he
fixed it.

But as previously indicated, I have a 1 GB RAM and only Word 2004 was
running on Mac OS X 10.3.5. And the terminal top command did not show
any particular memory problem. The Activity Monitor did not show any
strange CPU or Memory problem either.

2 - On "Word/Preferences/View/Show" I have all options selected, except
"Image Placeholders".

But I usually do not have pictures or images in the documents. And the
files which generated the crashes did not have pictures for sure. Not
even tables (except the last one which had 1-column and 2-column tables
with about 200 rows). In other words, I get the crashes even on text
files without pictures or tables.

On "Word/Preferences/Save" I have only selected:

--"Always create backup copy" That one I selected after you told me to
do so a few days ago.

--"Save preview picture with new documents" Do you mean that one? What
is this for anyway?

3 - You said that I should save frequently (actually, that is what I
have been doing for years to avoid losing my work due to the frequent
Word unexpected quits on Mac OS X). But then you also said that if I do
it I will have more probabilities that Word gets into trouble
("Eventually it runs out of file handles for all these temp docs"). So,
what to do?

4 - If I quit Word 2004 and open it again pressing the shift key (safe
mode) and then open the corrupted file that I sent to Elliott and try
to cut the text from the 12 table cells that caused the crash in the
first place, again Word unexpectedly quits.

If then I copy the error text generated automatically, open Word again
in normal way (not safe mode) and try to paste such text, I get the
same error reported above:

"There is insufficient memory. Save the document now".

I had to quit then Word and open TextEdit to paste and save the
contents of such error report. It is a 9-page document that I can send
you.

This is a nightmare, but I would be most than glad to help you find the
culprit.

BTW, since I am beta testers for some applications, sometimes the
developers have sent me special debugger versions of their applications
to track weird behaviors. I just wonder if perhaps you could send me
such debugger version of Word 2004 which would create a log file of
every crash or problem encountered. That way we could track the culprit
very quickly.

That is all for now.

Thanks again.
Regards,

---

 

[Tony]

Jeffrey,

I understand.

OK, I have just sent another message to Beth on this thread and as I
describe in it I have a brand new crash report that I can send you.

I will mail you all three files.

On the other hand I have had the "Microsoft Error Reporting Program"
active and have sent that way many crash reports since May 2004. You
can see the client machine code on the one that I will send you right
away by eMail.

It says: Total errors on this client: 160.

SO YOU SEE THAT I HAVE HAD 160 CRASHES FROM MAY 15TH 2004 UNTIL
SEPTEMBER 2ND 2004. NOT BAD --A GOLD MINE TO A DEBUGGER !

Should you need further information, please let me know.

Thanks.

---

nfuOn 2004-09-02 00:44:46 +0200, "Jeffrey Weston [MSFT]"

Sorry Tony, I got confused...

When the "Microsoft Error Reporting Program" is enabled in Office 2004,
(i.e. You get the Dialog after a crash that asks you if you want to send the
information to Microsoft), no crash log is stored.

So you'll have to copy & paste the information from the dialog into a text
file.

That's why after you upgraded it stopped dumping crash logs there.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey,

This is amazing. While waiting for your answer I did a search for
"crash" and "word" (visible and invisible) on my hard disk. These are
the files that I have found:

--File 1: size of 1.1 MB last modified on August 14th 2002
/Users/me/Library/Logs/Microsoft Word.crash.log

--File 2: size of 1.1 MB last modified on May 16th 2004
/Users/me/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Microsoft Word.crash.log

I cannot find the crash log file for Word 2004 or for the crashes I had
after May 16th 2004.

Note that on May 16th 2004 I updated from Word 10.1.4 (Office 10.1.5)
to Word 2004 (Office 2004).

I understand that maybe such word crash log file has now other name.
But which? How to find it?

Thanks.

---

Yes, that's it. Or when the Dialog asks if you want to send the information
to Microsoft, you can click "More Information" and copy and paste that to
file and send it to me.

Please also include a description of what you were doing, and we can start
from there. (I might come back and ask you more specific information so the
more you can remember about the "state" of Word when it crashed the better.)

Thanks

-- Jeffrey


On 9/1/04 2:48 PM, in article 2004090123483816807%nospam@nospamcom, "Tony"

Jeffrey,

Thanks for your kind support.

I will send it to you. Just one thing: I understand that you mean the
following file (please, confirm or otherwise let me know the file or
files that you mean):

/Users/me/Library/Logs/Microsoft Word.crash.log

Thanks again,

---
On 2004-09-01 22:43:09 +0200, "Jeffrey Weston [MSFT]"
<[email protected]> said:

Hey Tony, these frequent quits or Crashes that you get, would it be
possible
for you to send me directly the text file of your Crash Log?

It be helpful for us if I could get your crash log and also get a
description of what you were doing at the time Word crashed.

Maybe this way, us on the technical side you on the customer side can
figure
this out together.

You can send the log to my email address: (e-mail address removed)
(without the "online")

Jeffrey Weston
Mac Word Test
Macintosh Business Unit
Microsoft



On 8/30/04 11:39 AM, in article 2004083020395050073%nospam@nospamcom,
"Tony"

Beth,

Thanks.

Update (also to Elliott): I have tested the copy/pasted in the
"original" document but in other system: PowerMac G4/400 with 1 GB RAM
and Word 10.1.4 (Office 10.1.5) on Mac OS X 10.3.5 (Panther). I got
exactly the same as you told me: works fine, but when I save the
document and then close it, Word unexpectedly quits. Right as you said.

Note that both Macs are booted not from the internal drive but from an
external FireWire disk (different for each Mac). In case that may be
relevant.

-

On the other hand, answering to Beth...

I know about selecting manually, but I got the same "nice" crash when I
"Command C" to copy or "Command V" to cut after selecting. The crash is
not fired by the selection but for the copy, cut or paste afterwards.
Besides, it is easier "Shift Command Home" on a 29-page long document.

The table was a plain one-column with about 250 rows. But I rarely use
tables. 99% of my crashes are on documents without tables. Bookmarks
from text copy/pasted from web or eMail pages were also a crash culprit
and I deleted them all using the "Insert/Bookmark" option. But even
with all that fixed crashes continue. You can never be sure with Word.
It crashes at any time (and no other application does it my rock-solid
Mac OS X 10.3.5).

I never had a "disk full" error. On the other hand I rarely use "undo".
Maybe I did it three times in total on that session. Certainly not 60
or near it.

I have "Allow Fast Saves" turned off and, as previously indicated, all
options in the Save preferences are off except "Save preview picture
with new documents". Should I turn them on? I have them off because I
think that is best to avoid problems with Word --I am becoming paranoid
after all this nightmare-- and because I do not want to save every x
minutes but when I want (Command S), which usually is after doing
something on the document that if lost would take me time to recover.

But then, again, this is ludicrous. I have no crash or problem with any
of the dozens of applications (including other words processors) that I
use on Mac OS X 10.3.5. Why with Word? There is something wrong with
Word for sure.

My final suggestion to Microsoft would be to fix this serious problem.
I am experiencing these unexpected quits every day. Perhaps it is
because due to this I "Control S" every few minutes as well. I never
save with any other application except at the end of my work. If I do
with Word it is because it unexpectedly quits in the middle of my work.
And now it seems that frequent savings manually (Command S) can also
corrupt the file, as said by Elliott. This is frustrating. What should
I do then: save or not save manually frequently (Command S). Should I
activate any auto-save or auto-recover option in preferences). I am
lost until Microsoft fixes this.

And I want to thank you all for your kind support. I only with that
Microsoft would listen.

---
On 2004-08-30 20:00:31 +0200, Beth Rosengard
<[email protected]> said:

Hi Guys,

A couple of comments on what's been going on.

Tony, you don't have to use "Shift Command Home" to copy all but the last
paragraph mark. You can do it manually.

Secondly, there's another (better, according to John McGhie) way to
uncorrupt a document in Word 2004 (but not Word X). It involves saving
the
document as a web page. For the exact steps, see here:
<http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/DocumentCorruption.htm>.

Next: In this case, it appears that the corruption existed in the whole
document, but it could have resided just in the table. (Tables,
especially
nested ones, are particularly prone to corruption.) To uncorrupt just a
table, select it and go to Table> Convert> Convert Table to Text and then
immediately, without changing anything, Convert Text to Table again.

On the topic of memory: It sounds to me, Tony, as if you're running into
the 60 Saves bug. Briefly, what happens is that every time you hit Save,
Word has to make a temporary copy of your document as it exists at that
moment so that if you hit Undo, it has a history of all your actions in
the
document. Each time it makes a temporary copy it has to give it a file
handle and Word has a finite number of file handles (approx. 60) it can
use.
When it runs out of file handles, it gives you the memory error ­ which
is
usually expressed as Disk Full.

The simplest way to avoid getting this error is to close and reopen your
document periodically. This wipes out all those temp files. Another
workaround is detailed here:
<http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/DiskFullError.htm>. Now this error is
*supposed* to have been fixed in Word 2004 (as explained in the article).
So either the fix isn't as effective as expected or you're experiencing
something else altogether. (You DO have Allow Fast Saves turned off,
don't
you?)

Hope this helps!