Word 2007 malfunctioning

[Jim B]

There are 3 symptoms

1. When I load Word I get the message "Word automatically saved changes to
the normal document. Do you want to load it?"

2. When I go to Word Options, only the "Popular" options are accessible.

3. When Word is closed the message "Microsoft Word has stopped working" is
received and Word restarts.

What I have tried so far:

- remove all templates.
- run Office diagnostics - no problems were found.
- start Word with the "/a" switch. In this case all the above issues
disappeared.
- I have attempted to remove all add-ins when in administrator mode, but
most of them will not allow alteration.

I would appreciate suggestions on what to try next.

Thank you.

Jim B.

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

When you say that you removed all templates, am I correct that that includes
Normal.dotm (and if you upgraded from Word 2003 or earlier, there might be a
leftover Normal.dot that's causing the problem).

After eliminating Normal.dotm as the problem, and trying to remove add-ins,
the next step usually is to try deleting the Data key in the registry (and
sometimes the Options key, but not usually):

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word

 

[Jim B]

Thanks Herb.

I had deleted all templates from all 3 template locations (including Startup
and Group). This didn't affect the behaviour at all.

I have now deleted the Add-Ins key and this has resolved issues 1 and 2 but
the third, "Microsoft has stopped Working" is still present.

I don't see an Options key under
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word. The only keys
remaining are DocumentInspectors and InstallRoot.

Thanks again for any further suggestions.

Jim

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

Hmmm... I don't have either DocumentInspectors or InstallRoot in my registry
under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word. I do see
InstallRoot under ...\Office\11.0 (but not under Word there, either). But, I
do have the following two keys:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Data

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Options

....along with 10 others.

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com

 

[Jim B]

I apologise Mike; my previous post was incorrect in that I was looking at
(and deleting from) the wrong hive, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE rather than
HKEY_CURRENT_USER. I had been looking around in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE because of
other information I had found in a search for solutions.

You were completely right; as soon as I had deleted the data key the issues
resolved.

What I am puzzled about are several things. During searching discovered
that others have had the same or closely related issues and not one of the
solutions offered was the one you proposed. In most cases users had been
unable to resolve the issue. Furthermore, one link trail I followed took me
to a Microsoft site (
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA100341271033.aspx ). There I did not
find your solution to removing the add-ins and, in fact, found the page sent
me round in a loop offering little help on the way.

You obviously know a lot about Word and would not offer the advice you gave
me without being confident it was safe. Why is is not easily available from
Microsoft? Or elsewhere? I have average searching skills and yet not once did
I get what I need. I don't think depending on your being available to help is
good enough; you obviously have other things to do with your life and, also,
people should not have to wait for a solution where a solution to a known
problem exists. I had got to the point where I was seriously considering
investing hours reinstalling Office and Vista.

There seems, to me, to be some kind of system failure by Microsoft here.
Their diagnostic does not pick up the problem, their knowledge base doesn't
provide the answer and their forum (which I had trouble making work by the
way - because it depends on popups and there is no warning about this)
depends on the availability of an unpaid expert. I've been an apologist for
Microsoft for 20 years now, but this is the sort of thing which provides
powerful ammunition for the antiMS contingent.

What think you?

Again, many thanks.

Jim B.

 

[Jim B]

For the record....

As the result of the help obtained here I have been able to correct the
symptoms described on my computer by the following:

1. 1. Remove Adobe Contribute Add-in in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins

2. Remove Data Key in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins

 

[Beth Melton]

Did you delete or rename those keys? If you renamed them and still have them
could I get a copy? I think the current outbreak of renamed Data keys needs
more research. If you needed to remove the add-in and the Data key to get
Word running then that indicates the add-in corrupted the Data key in some
way. There's no way to tell for sure but having the Reg keys would certainly
help and perhaps find an underlying cause.

If you have them, and are willing to send them to me, in the Registry select
the renamed key, click File/Export, and provide a name for the exported
file. Then change the .reg file extension to .txt prior to emailing them --
otherwise they're likely to be treated as spam. They are just text files so
you can open and review them prior to emailing them. To obtain a valid email
address remove NoSpam4Me from (e-mail address removed)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP
https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/Melton
What is a Microsoft MVP? http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/gp/mvpfaqs

Guides for the Office 2007 Interface:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/HA102295841033.aspx

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

Who's Mike?

In any event, it can be frustrating trying to nail down the solution to
problems. I suspect that a good deal of the problem is vocabulary, keywords,
and the need for better and more intelligent searching algorithms. I
frequently find that I cannot discover answers by searching for logical
things in Help. Once I know how to do something, I can then backtrack and
find the correct answer in Help. But, there didn't seem to be any way to
find the answer in Help until I'd already zeroed in on the correct
terminology through other means (usually Google). The same is true of
Microsoft's knowledgebase and other resources. I don't know if the answer
lies in proper indexing, keywords, or just what. All I know that is the
current resources don't seem to be very good at identifying solutions unless
you happen to use precisely the correct vocabulary.

In the current instance, I'm not sure even that would've helped. Searching
for "word has stopped working", I found two article on
support.microsoft.com, neither even remotely similar to your experience.
Searching for "data key", the following articles might've led you to a
solution, even though the first two talk only about Word 2003 and 2002:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822645

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/820919

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822648

But... without having the phrase "data key" in hand, I'm not sure what you
would've had to do to ultimately discover that deleting the data key might
be part of your particular solution.

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com