'there was a problem sending the command to the program' error message in windows 7 using word 2007

I had this issue today and found that it was being caused by an COM add-in that was not configured properly.

As a few other people have stated, once Word had loaded, it would load documents quickly, but the inital startup of Word was slow, taking a good 20 seconds to load.

Running it with the no-addons switch pointed me in the right direction:

Winword.exe /a

http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/word-help/command-line-switches-for-microsoft-office-word-2007-HP010164010.aspx

Once I disabled the add-in, it works normally - and loads in approx 2 seconds.

I've been having the same problem and this answer really helped!

I use Office 2007 32bit under Win7 and at some point I find this error: "there was a problem sending the command to the application". After trying a few recommended fixes including deleting ddexec key and Data key and changing file association a few times back and forth Word was still stubborn. Excel got fixed easily from the preferences. For Word, running

winword /r

from the search box solved my problem. Funny thing though, when I do Open with/MS Word the error is still there, but at least double clicking works now.

With the same problem as parson10 (...problem sending command...). using Word 2003, Itried the solution offered helpfully by CardSolve.

The latter's procedure was not successful. It was not clear to me how the desktop icon Wddata would be used and I wondered whether this was connected with my failure?

Check my resolution posted in this comments thread.