Re: Word 2004 crashes when cutting text - FIXED!!!

From: Beth Rosengard (bethrosengard_at_earthlink.net)
Date: 09/01/04 

Date: Wed, 01 Sep 2004 14:46:42 -0700

Hi Tony,

I'm going to give you a couple of recommendations at the bottom of this, but
see inline responses first.

On 8/30/04 11:39 AM, in article 2004083020395050073%nospam@nospamcom, "Tony"
<nospam@nospam.com> wrote:
 
> The table was a plain one-column with about 250 rows. But I rarely use
> tables. 99% of my crashes are on documents without tables. Bookmarks
> from text copy/pasted from web or eMail pages were also a crash culprit
> and I deleted them all using the "Insert/Bookmark" option. But even
> with all that fixed crashes continue. You can never be sure with Word.
> It crashes at any time (and no other application does it my rock-solid
> Mac OS X 10.3.5).

Word crashing for no apparent reason is not typical. Something is wrong; we
just have to find it.
 
> I never had a "disk full" error. On the other hand I rarely use "undo".
> Maybe I did it three times in total on that session. Certainly not 60
> or near it.

You misunderstood. It doesn't matter how many times you use Undo (if ever);
what matters is how many times you hit Save. Every time you save, Word has
to create a temporary document *in case* you hit Undo, so it knows what to
undo. Eventually it runs out of file handles for all these temp docs.

But if you've never gotten the "disk full" error message, this is probably
irrelevant anyway. Do you remember the more-or-less exact wording of the
memory error you say you're getting?
 
> I have "Allow Fast Saves" turned off and, as previously indicated, all
> options in the Save preferences are off except "Save preview picture
> with new documents". Should I turn them on? I have them off because I
> think that is best to avoid problems with Word --I am becoming paranoid
> after all this nightmare-- and because I do not want to save every x
> minutes but when I want (Command S), which usually is after doing
> something on the document that if lost would take me time to recover.

Do you actually use the preview pictures? I seem to remember hearing that
they use a lot of space so if you don't, turn this option off. Otherwise,
you should turn on "Always make backup" as a safety measure and forget all
the other options.
 
> But then, again, this is ludicrous. I have no crash or problem with any
> of the dozens of applications (including other words processors) that I
> use on Mac OS X 10.3.5. Why with Word? There is something wrong with
> Word for sure.

There is certainly something wrong with the way Word is interacting with
your system; that doesn't *necessarily* mean there is anything wrong with
Word itself. Word is more complex and more demanding than probably 95% of
the Mac applications available. That means there are more opportunities for
conflicts. It also means there are more things that can go wrong during
installation.

Word also contains a good bit of legacy code. That's the stuff that was
there in the beginning (like Allow Fast Saves). From what I understand,
much of this legacy code is so deeply embedded and intertwined with later
code that removing it is likely to cause many more issues than leaving it
alone.
 
> And now it seems that frequent savings manually (Command S) can also
> corrupt the file, as said by Elliott. This is frustrating. What should
> I do then: save or not save manually frequently (Command S). Should I
> activate any auto-save or auto-recover option in preferences). I am
> lost until Microsoft fixes this.

You *should* save frequently. Also, closing and reopening your document
every once in a while doesn't hurt. And, if you see signs of possible
corruption, don't wait till it gets worse! Uncorrupt the document right
away. It's easy enough to do following either of the methods in that
article I pointed you to.
 
On 8/30/04 1:33 PM, in article 2004083022333643658%nospam@nospamcom, "Tony"
<nospam@nospam.com> wrote:

> Only one question: if Word crashes (sadly it will do!) where can I look
> to find such ?backup copy?? Or perhaps Word would open it for me
> automatically next time that I open such file?

You'll see the backup copy as a semi-grayed-out icon in the same folder that
you saved the original doc to. I don't know, but I suspect that Word will
not open the backup automatically. I would think you'd have to do it
manually (which can be done regardless of the fact that it looks grayed
out).
 
> Well I must say that not being administrators you know so much about
> Word. I want you to thank you twice for offering such great help being
> also Word users as I am...

You're very welcome. Note that Jeffrey Weston, who *is* a Microsoft
employee has requested that you send crash logs to him directly. Please do
so!

However, try this regardless: Quit Word and then relaunch it while you hold
down the Shift key. This is known as opening in Safe Mode, since just about
everything will be disabled (macros, custom dictionaries, add-ins, prefs and
more). Now open a document that reliably crashes on you (like maybe the
original of the one that Elliott fixed for you?). Perform the actions that
made Word crash *consistently* before. If you have no problems, that means
that Word is fine but something else (one of the disabled components) is
*not* fine. If the document continues to crash, then something is wrong
with Word or your installation of it.

In that case, my recommendation would be to do a complete step-by-step
removal and reinstallation of all of Office, following the procedures
outlined here: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/RemoveReinstall.htm>. And
don't take any shortcuts! Do it right.

Good luck.

Beth

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