Word Chokes and Dies

[Thomas Bartkus]

Anybody have any insight, tips or suggestions for coping with corrupted .doc
files that cause Word to choke and die?

I can accept that there will be corrupted documents. AND I don't need to
recover these particular (bad!) documents.

BUT

How do you write VBA code to scan a bunch of documents when there is always
1 bad apple that will cause Word to go into cardiac arrest? Any ideas on
testing a .doc file for validity - before we pass it to Word? Any patch
fixes out there for Word to get it to gracefully reject a file it can't
load - without dying? Can anyone put their finger on the exact
circumstances that will cause Word to choke?

I am working with Word 2000 but the offending .doc files also cause Word XP
to choke.

Don't know how to beat this one with code!
Thomas Bartkus

 

[Howard Kaikow]

You need to include error handling to try to log such document, then skip
the docs and try to continue processing.
You'll need to examine each document outside of the macros to see if you can
detect corruption.

 

[Thomas Bartkus]

You need to include error handling to try to log such document, then skip
the docs and try to continue processing.

Ahh! but that's the problem. When Word tries to look at one of these files,
it is locked up. No error handling code is possible.

You'll need to examine each document outside of the macros to see if you can
detect corruption.

Yes, but what are we looking for? What is it about certain files that cause
the Word application to lock up?

How does one identify a file corrupted in such a way that it will fatally
poison the Word application?
Thomas Bartkus