word xp document page count increases until not responding

[Christina D]

weird thing happened today, I detached a document that was from an email; the
document was 14 pages long and I began simply typing and editing the document
when something triggered and the page # count on the bottom taskbar was
growing /counting up.. it went up to @ 2900 pages and counting before it
finally crashed (not responding) I was able to end task the document and I
ran a virus scan which came clean. I then deleted and re-detached the
document again. I opened and it was 14pages again, I then again began editing
the document with no issues. Just was wondering what might be causing
this...if you had any thoughts?

 

[Christina D]

I figured it out!!! In the header of the document the person who created the
document had used/ inserted a textbox and typed the page #. Some how this was
affecting the page count. When you clicked enter on page 11 under this one
header for some reason it would start adding many blank pages and that is
what was making the page count increase. Once this texbox with the page
number was removed from the header and hit enter on the page that was causing
the issue it didn't count up or add pages.
I think that is what was the cause...

 

[Beth Melton]

That may not have been it but the removal of the text box may have
been enough to stop the infinite pagination.

Does your document include graphics or embedded objects? If so then
that could be a cause of your problem. From what I can gather it has
to do with the paragraph the object is anchored to.

Word is attempting to keep the paragraph on the page, and since the
object is also anchored to the paragraph it's trying to keep it on the
page, so it goes to the next page, and tries the same and fails again,
so it goes into a continuous repagination loop.

It may have to do with the Keep Lines Together Property or it could be
one paragraph is spanning multiple pages and the object is looking for
a paragraph mark to anchor to, and cannot find it,because no paragraph
either begins or ends on that page.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

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