Word disappears

[Art]

I've got a user here that has been having a weird problem. She'll usually
have Word open all day -- it will be sitting there on her task bar where it
belongs. Sometimes, even when she's not working on it, it will disappear.
It will no longer be on the taskbar. Then, when she re-opens word it begins
with document 2.

She called me over today just after it disappeared. I ran the task manager
and sure enough Word was there as a process. I ended it and then when she
restarted it, it opened with document 1.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? We just recently gave her a new
machine, nothing really unusual on it. She's running Office 2003.

I'd appreciate any advice.

 

[Art]

A follow up.

It just happened again. The user had Word open, but sitting minimized. She
went into e-mail and was composing a message. e-mail does use Word as its
editor. She minimized the message she was working on and emptied her deleted
items. Word disappeared. She called me at that point.

I went over and checked task manager. Word was there as a process. I didn't
kill it. She started Word again and opened a document to demonstrate to me
what happens. She closed the document, not the application, but the
application closed. She again restarted Word. I looked at the Windows menu
item and found the e-mail she had been working on as a second document.

I then spent 5 minutes or so trying unsuccessfully to re-create the problem.
Naturally I couldn't.

Any ideas?

 

[Poprivet]

I've got a user here that has been having a weird problem. She'll
usually have Word open all day -- it will be sitting there on her
task bar where it belongs. Sometimes, even when she's not working on
it, it will disappear. It will no longer be on the taskbar. Then,
when she re-opens word it begins with document 2.

She called me over today just after it disappeared. I ran the task
manager and sure enough Word was there as a process. I ended it and
then when she restarted it, it opened with document 1.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? We just recently gave her a new
machine, nothing really unusual on it. She's running Office 2003.

I'd appreciate any advice.

If she doesn't send e-mail with Word, does it still happen? Try to pin down
a specific event that causes it to happen by keeping track of what she does
just before the problem happens. It shouldn't be too hard to reproduce.

Has the machine been Restarted recently? If not, do so.

What changed or was installed just before that started to happen?

Try:
-- locate and delete normal.dot. If you have any macros, etc. stored in
it, those will be lost too.
-- Restart Word. That will recreate normal.dot from defaults.
-- Check for the problem.

No luck?
Try a Repair Install: Start the office (or Word) installer and choose to
Recopy Files; I forget the wording it's using. It might be "Repair Word" or
similar too.
That will recopy all of the critical files to the hard drive.
Check to see if all the SP's are installed (Help, About). IIRC it should
be at SP3.

HTH
Pop`

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

See “WD: Word Quits Unexpectedly When Selecting a Document from the Windows
Taskbarâ€
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=555169

 

[Art]

Thanks Suzanne, I'll give it a try when I get back in the office.