topic Re: Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting in Electronics

Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

Icegoddess — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 04:33:45 GMT

Anybody else have a problem with Microsoft Word crashing? It seems to happen to me when I get a document of a certain size. Then, it will crash anytime I try to add or change anything. I really wouldn't expect 207 pages to be a particularly large document.

I have tried using Pages (Mac's version of Word), but when I open the document all of my highlights are gone. My other choice is LibreOffice which does save my highlights, but I can't copy content from a Word document and paste it into these other programs. That's kinda important for what I'm working on since I'm trying to merge all my different census research into one document.

I have found that I can mail a LibreOffice document in Word format. For some reason I can't export it into Word, but I can mail it in Word. So, I'm going to try mailing myself the document that I imported and made a few changes to and hope that it fixes whatever glitch is causing Word to crash.

My other complaint with LibreOffice is that it is very jumpy when scrolling between pages. Word can do that too when using the scroll bars, but if I scroll by highlighting text it changes pages smoothly.

Mostly I'm just venting, but wondering if anybody has run into any of these problems and have workarounds.

I apparently won't be able to update my Mac software to any newer version without upgrading to the subscription version of Word which I really don't want to do. I'm currently using Mojave (10.14.6)

Re: Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

Desertdi — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 08:12:38 GMT

Could your internet provider be at fault?

Re: Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

glb613 — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 10:19:42 GMT

Using the word "crashes" to describe a problem is meaningless. It's so generic, it could mean anything which doesn't help identify the problem. Someone might be able to help if you post back with a better description of what is happening.

Re: Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

gardenman — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 11:18:46 GMT

I use Word with large files (300+ page novels) routinely with no trouble, but I use the always updated subscription based version on a Windows PC. My best guesstimate would be that you're exceeding a file size limit of some sort in iOS that's causing the trouble, but that's a total guess. If your file includes large illustrations, photos, videos, in addition to text, it's possible you've made a larger file than your computer is comfortable handling. I find Word to be very stable and reliable these days on my Windows PC.

If you get an error message when it crashes, post that and it'll help us resolve the issue.

Re: Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

jackthebear — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 12:42:49 GMT

haven't used Word in a couple of years

I use Google sheets or pages or whatever its called

your version might be unsupported and you might need to upgrade is all I can think of

Re: Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

drizzellla — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 12:50:42 GMT

Yesterday my husband encountered a problem with Word. So he ran diagnostics.

Today he is unable to access his computer. He goes to Settings and nothing happens.

Re: Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

World Traveler — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 13:56:36 GMT

I had that happen a couple of weeks ago when I upgraded on my Mac to the latest IOS version. All the Microsoft Suite programs wouldn't work or open. I was able to click on something in Word at the top of the page, asking if I wanted to upgrade to the newest version of Word (and probably the others).

At work, we also found that Word would not work with the latest upgrade. Our Tech Department got it all worked out, so it is not a problem now. I asked them what the problem was and they said that the first update of the MAC IOS was not compatible with Word and to wait for the next update, which was a couple of days later, I think. We don't have problems now. Evidently Apple fixed the problem within a day or two.

Re: Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

Nuttmeg — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 14:26:41 GMT

A software update and new subscription to Mac Office may help.

I have used Outlook for years . The new cloud based program runs well and updates itself automatically. I did have a glitch once. I signed into my account online and was able to fix the problem.

Re: Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

Icegoddess — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 16:44:08 GMT

@glb613 wrote:
Using the word "crashes" to describe a problem is meaningless. It's so generic, it could mean anything which doesn't help identify the problem. Someone might be able to help if you post back with a better description of what is happening.

@glb613 not sure if this is a better description. Whenever I type something in the document Word immediately shuts down and gives me a little message that it has unexpectedly shut down. And often when it does that, when I reopen that document, it becomes read-only and I have to save it to another name to make it editable.

Someone mentioned something about document size. It's 1.5 Mb. There are not pictures, no graphics. It's simply text, basically, it's an extremely large outline.

It did this with other documents that were even smaller at 607kb before I updated to lthe MAC OS version I'm currently using, so I don't think it has anything to do with document size.

ETA: the 1.5 MB size for the document is not the original size which was more like 580 KB. The 1.5 MB is what LibreOffice turned it into after changing it back to Word format.

Re: Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

iwrite — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 20:17:30 GMT

it would be helpful if you stated which version of word you are using (ie 2016, 2019), especially if you are using office/word 365.

would also be helpful to know what you mean by 'crash'.

is word crashing or is your computer crashing? when word freezes, can you open other software?

a 207 page document, is not enough of a reason for the document to crash.

try this, open the doc and do file - save as and give it a new name.
doing this will reset the number of revisions to 1.

it is possible that there is a limit on the number of revisions/saves that one word doc can support.

make a change in the doc with the new name and save it.

if the doc has macro's, one could be failing behind the scene

Re: Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

Icegoddess — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 23:25:06 GMT

@iwrite wrote:

it would be helpful if you stated which version of word you are using (ie 2016, 2019), especially if you are using office/word 365.

would also be helpful to know what you mean by 'crash'.

is word crashing or is your computer crashing? when word freezes, can you open other software?

a 207 page document, is not enough of a reason for the document to crash.

try this, open the doc and do file - save as and give it a new name.
doing this will reset the number of revisions to 1.

it is possible that there is a limit on the number of revisions/saves that one word doc can support.

make a change in the doc with the new name and save it.

if the doc has macro's, one could be failing behind the scene

@iwrite

I am using Word 2008 for Mac 12.3.6.

As I stated in my response above your post: Whenever I type something in the document Word immediately shuts down and gives me a little message that it has unexpectedly shut down. And often when it does that, when I reopen that document, it becomes read-only and I have to save it to another name to make it editable.

I have tried renaming the document and copy and pasting the contents into another document. No Joy. Even the document I transferred into Libre Office that I changed back into a Word document does it, so whatever glitch it has follows the document even when put in a different document format.

No macros. It's simply text in outline format. The entire document looks basically like this:

Re: Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

iwrite — Fri, 01 Nov 2019 08:08:58 GMT

hmmmm @Icegoddess

i don't use a mac . . . but the document you posted should not cause that to happen.

have you tried just opening the doc in question, don't type anything and IMMEDIATELY do a file - save as, as i suggested before.

you said you 'renamed' the document. i don't know if you mean that is the same as what i suggested or not. to me, renaming a document is right-clicking on the file and selecting 'rename'. that is not what i am saying to do.

back in the day, i had what you describe happen. once i saved the file with a new name, things were fine. your word document could be corrupt or has been saved too many times. at some point, word will go bonkers if the file has been saved too many times.

'sometimes', the changes that you made are saved in the read only file. i think you have to have an option checked, for that to happen.

Re: Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

Icegoddess — Fri, 01 Nov 2019 16:13:37 GMT

@iwrite , when I say I renamed the document I used the Save As option.

I do save a lot since I don't want to have to try and find where my last saved edits are. I'm not working down through the document, so it could be difficult to find, although I have had to do it in the past and it was a total pain re-doing all that work, hence the reason I save a lot.

I do think there is some corruption in there since the problem continues when I open it in a different word processing program and then save it back as a Word document. I finally figured out how to copy it to Pages (which is Mac's version of Word) and I can copy/paste between them, so for now I'll just do that. I couldn't copy/paste between Word and LibreOffice. Problem is, if I ever need to give a copy to someone I'll have to save it back to Word and then tell them they probably won't be able to edit it.

If I could figure out where the corruption is I could copy and paste the other sections of it to a new document and then just re-type the section where the corruption is.

Re: Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

iwrite — Sat, 09 Nov 2019 18:04:27 GMT

@Icegoddess

i don't think that you can figure out where the corruption is because it's an accumulation of things. contrary to what many believe, word has it's limitations. i remember a time where if you had too many pictures of screen shots, the word doc would become corrupt and replace some pictures with strange letters.

to get around that, i'd write the entire document and then add all of the screen shots. annoying yes, so for a while i switched to frame maker. when that problem was fixed in word, i switched back to it.

heavily formatted word docs continue to be a problem. from what i saw of your doc, it doesn't fall into that category.

you may want to look into using book authoring software like scrivener, by literatureandlatte dot com