Word Crashes in Tiger (revisited)

[Michael Jardine]

I have a rather long document, which is made up of notes from a class. Most
of the notes are taken in Notebook view, but occasionally I switch to Page
Layout view so that I can insert a table or equation. I then switch back to
Notebook view. When in notebook view, if I try to change the outline format
in a table from bullets to numbers, the program hangs (beach balls) and I
have to do a Force Quit.

* This never occurred when using Panther.
* This does not occur if I switch back to Page Layout view to make the
formatting change.
* I saved the file to a PC, opened it, made some changes to the chart, then
saved it on the PC then re-opened it on my Mac. Same problem existed.
* I coped the page where the error occurs, and created a new document
containing just that page with the table in it. The error does NOT occur
when I make the formatting changes from within Notebook view.

Any suggestions?

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Michael:

I've been avoiding this question, hoping someone else would pick it up...

I think the "problem" is corrupted list templates. They are an internal
structure in a Word document, similar to, and sometimes associated with,
styles. When they corrupt, crashes and hangs are one of the symptoms. List
templates are the internal mechanism Word uses to apply bullets or
numbering.

It can also be a corrupted table. Tables are a little unstable when
converting from one kind of view to another.

The first thing I would try is renaming your Normal template. Word must be
quit when you do this. It will create a new one when it restarts.

If documents you create from now on are OK, that was it. The existing
documents will now need to be fixed.

You may be able to bring them right by using Format>Bullets and Numbering
and clicking RESET on each of the samples in the dialog. And then (and you
MUST do this immediately) save and close the document. That forces Word to
rebuild the document internal structure.

After that, you bullets and numbering may require reformatting, but
hopefully it won't crash Word when you do.

If it does, go into Normal view, select the Table, and use
Table>Convert>Table to Text to convert the table to ordinary text. Don't
shift your selection, immediately use Table>Convert... To convert it back to
a table again. That rebuilds the table structure and usually fixes them.

Hope this helps

I have a rather long document, which is made up of notes from a class. Most
of the notes are taken in Notebook view, but occasionally I switch to Page
Layout view so that I can insert a table or equation. I then switch back to
Notebook view. When in notebook view, if I try to change the outline format
in a table from bullets to numbers, the program hangs (beach balls) and I have
to do a Force Quit.

* This never occurred when using Panther.
* This does not occur if I switch back to Page Layout view to make the
formatting change.
* I saved the file to a PC, opened it, made some changes to the chart, then
saved it on the PC then re-opened it on my Mac. Same problem existed.
* I coped the page where the error occurs, and created a new document
containing just that page with the table in it. The error does NOT occur when
I make the formatting changes from within Notebook view.

Any suggestions?

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410