Word 2007 Hangs Upon Opening .doc files

[ckapilla]

We have a library of legal documents 1 to 40 pages in length. We have
discovered that when some of these are opened in Word 2007 the application
freezes and requires to be killed via task manager.

(If the documents are first saved as .docx files in Word 2003 using the
Compatibility pack, then Word 2007 can open them with no problem.)

Is there someone at Microsoft to whom I can send some of these documents
with the hope that the problem can be addressed in a future service pack?

thx

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

Is the problem happening on multiple computers? I ask because sometimes
something that looks like a Word problem is a "local" corruption problem.

If you care to send me one of the files, I can attempt to identify the
problem and file a bug report with Microsoft. If so... send to herb at
herbtyson dot com.

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

HI, Chris,

I’m able to verify the problem, and I will report to Microsoft after I
attempt to narrow down the cause. Interestingly, Word doesn’t freeze solidly
here. Instead, it slows down a lot, and can eventually be closed by normal
means, if I'm really patient. However, the document never gets past page 2,
and it scrambles what you see on page 1.

Interestingly, however, I find that if I save immediately in .docx -- from
Word 2007 -- the resulting document works perfectly! That is to say, you don’t
need to pre-save in .docx format using Word 2003 (or earlier). So, while
this is not a magic bullet, it does save a step, since Word 2007 is itself
capable of saving the file in .docx format, after which, the entire document
is fine.

Perhaps even more interestingly, however, is the fact that if I then re-save
the file (again using Word 2007) in .doc format, close it, and re-open it
using Word 2007, the file is again a problem for Word 2007. So, Word 2007
itself is able to create the problem .doc file. Clearly, there is some
element that Word 2007 is not able to handle when reading the file, since it
appears to have no problem writing the file.

I will work with this file a little bit more today and see what I discover.
I want to see if I can isolate the problem element in the file.