Word 2007 Suddenly Not Working- Unable To Open Documents

[Mindy325]

I'm using Word from Office Home and Student 2007 with Vista Home Premium. It
was working perfectly until about 5 days ago. I have not installed anything
different. It used to show a counter where it was counting the words of the
document and then the documant would open. Now it shows a blank screen with
the counter at zero. The document itself is not empty. It still shows the
appropriate number of kbs on the desktop.

I went online to try to diagnose, repair, and update. It told me that I had
all of the Microsoft updates. (By the way, this might or might not be
related, but other Microsoft updates keep asking me to download them even
though they installed successfully.) I uninstalled and then re-installed
Office 2007 and by doing so I had to purchase a new product key since I
misplaced the first one. Still nothing helped.

I did notice that if I clicked on the Microsoft icon in the upper lefthand
corner of the blank document, I could see a menu of my recent documents and
even search in an explorer type of menu system. In that roundabout way I
could open the files. But if I tried it the normal way, I still got the blank
screen.

When I would close the blank document, it said Word has stopped working,
that it was trying to recover the data, and that it was searching online for
a solution. That only brought me back to the suggestion to update which I had
already done. I even did antivirus and antispyware scans. There is nothing
wrong with the documents themselves. I opened them on someone else's computer
that had Word 2007 and they opened without a problem. I would like to be able
to open my documents in one step the way I used to.

Sorry this was so long. Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[Mindy325]

Just an update:
I have tried suggestions such as renaming normal.doc, changing the default
printer and removing and reinstalling the printer driver. After these
manipulations the document will open correctly the first time only and then
go back to the incorrect way each time after. But at all times on closure the
program always said, "Word has stopped working." From there it's the same as
below. Also of note is that all my system restore points from before the
problem started have now been deleted by the system. They didn't work anyway.
When the problem first happened I tried system restore and it said it
couldn't be restored. I don't know what to do anymore.

 

[mutu]

Same thing is happening to me. When I work and close the office, either word
or powerpoint. It gives an error message. I downloaded all uploads, and
windows check online everything seems OK but the error message still there.
Is there anybody that may help?

"Mindy325":

 

[jgt]

This sounds similar to a problem I had, try the following which was
suggested for my issue and resolved it.

Sounds like a corrupted Word DataKey. Run Regedit, navigate down to DATA and
delete it. When Word is restarted, it will automatically recreate the keys.

Word DataKey

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\version number\Word\Data


After I deleted the "Data" key (BTW for office 2007 the version is 12), I
opened Xplorer2 (Windows Explorer replacement), found a word file,
double-clicked on it and I could use my mouse as expected. Everything now
seems normal.