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Honored Contributor
Posts: 11,923
Registered: ‎03-19-2010

Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

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)

Honored Contributor
Posts: 18,781
Registered: ‎03-13-2010

Re: Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

Could your internet provider be at fault?

♥Surface of the Sun♥
Respected Contributor
Posts: 3,442
Registered: ‎03-09-2010

Re: Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

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. 

Honored Contributor
Posts: 24,109
Registered: ‎03-09-2010

Re: Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

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.

Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!
Honored Contributor
Posts: 16,578
Registered: ‎03-11-2010

Re: Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

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 

Honored Contributor
Posts: 8,035
Registered: ‎03-14-2010

Re: Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

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.

Honored Contributor
Posts: 12,172
Registered: ‎02-02-2015

Re: Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

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.

Esteemed Contributor
Posts: 5,419
Registered: ‎03-09-2010

Re: Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

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. 

Honored Contributor
Posts: 11,923
Registered: ‎03-19-2010

Re: Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

[ Edited ]

@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.

Valued Contributor
Posts: 755
Registered: ‎01-11-2019

Re: Microsoft Word crashes, mostly just Venting

[ Edited ]

 

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