Hi, I have just purchased Office 2013 and have used Word for a couple of minutes, but it repeatedly stops responding in specific scenarios. It is far too buggy for me to migrate from my previous version of Office. Situations in which it freezes: Opening the options menu On start up (when it claims that it is not the default program) - I fixed this one by making it the default program for everything Closing the word document and choosing not to save Scrolling through a very long document Excel does not seem to have the same bugs, and I have successfully reached the options page on that program to turn off graphics acceleration. The main reason I purchased Office 2013 was for Word and I would really like to have it functioning properly. I am currently very disappointed and annoyed. Other (possibly) relevant details Platform: Windows 7 Other Microsoft Office 2003 Microsoft 2010 Starter (pre-installed on laptop purchase) Thanks for the help.

Where do i send my invoice for the 2.5 extra hours I spent working on a document for a client which should have taken 90 minutes but took over twice as long because Word 2013 kept hanging as I was typing or, when it was responding was typing 1..c...h...a...r...a..c...t...e...r...p...e...r...second? My machine: brand new i5 processor, 6Gb ram, windows 8 Pro, office 365 installed. none of the allegedly conflicting products are installed on this brand new machine, purchased mainly because my other Windows 7 Pro machine was having similar issues with Office 2013. I could diagnose the issue and the underlying problem in the code, but that's Microsoft's job not mine. Customer service teams who respond with a cut and paste script are great as they do weed out potential conflicts that lead to issues, but on a brand new machine that only has office on it that is not the case. I have had similar issues in excel and powerpoint as well as in Word. the software doesn't work as advertised or as marketed. it is a defective product. It must be fixed. Basically I'm going to have to work over the weekend to catch up on the lost productivity from this productivity suite, which other than this issue I'm reasonably happy with. but if this issue isn't fixed I'll be switching platform. and as time spent working is time i don't spend with my family it comes at a price. where do I send the invoice?

Good one JDoran. What I do now is before I quit I hit save at least 10 times, wait a bit, then close the file. Does it always work? No, but this is not high-quality software we are dealing with. I also split up my large file into small sections and work on them individually. Periodically copying them over into the main document for archiving. As far as what the engineer asked. LOL is all I can say. His job is to provide functional software, I have another job. I am not going to do his job for him by debugging his program. My computer is top of the line and has no trouble running very graphics intensive software. This problem is just going to spread. Soon people will learn that MS Word is not suitable for business use. Hope MS employees have other options job-wise.

What Doug Robbins is really asking is... "DO YOU HAVE ANY OTHER SOFTWARE OTHER THAN WORD 2013 RUNNING ON YOUR COMPUTER? MICROSOFT WORD WORKS BEST ON A PC DEDICATED FOR USE BY WORD 2013 ALONE ONLY AFTER A CLEAN INSTALL OF OUR WONDERFUL OPERATING SYSTEM!"

Thanks for responding to this. One would expect a program that has done word processing for decades would have gotten the bugs worked out, but this random freezing thing is getting old. All I want is a simple word processor. No need for anything fancy, just something reliable that I can write and save. Word used to be that. The file is docx and yes I have tried repairing it and have copied over the text to a new document and have many many backups in different places. I cannot reproduce the bug. Just now I opened the file, selected some text to copy and when I closed it the program froze again. I did not make any changes to the text. Just copied some. So before I move on to another word processor, is there a version of word that is just a word processor? Just something to enter text in but that can handle 50k+ words? No graphics or anything, just words. How hard is that? It needs some formatting such as page breaks and italics and maybe bold, or is that too much to expect from Word now? It is not just me having this issue so if I was at Microsoft and my biggest cash cow was having issues I would devote every person in the company to solving it and patching it without bothering the customers. It is not my problem that it this program is bugged. If it doesn't work then it is not my responsibility to fix it. I am only complaining because I am in the middle of a project. A few more weeks of random freezing and I will just move the whole thing over to another program and delete Office. Patch it!!!

First thing to do is make a copy of the file. Then, try copying everything EXCEPT for the final paragraph mark (¶) and paste it into a new document and save that document, then close everything and restart your computer and Word and then open the new document into which you pasted the content of the original and see if the problem occurs with that document. If not, then it would appear that they may have been some form of corruption in the original. When ever working on a large document, you should make back-up copies of it. See the following page of fellow MVP Graham Mayor's website: http://www.gmayor.com/automatically_backup.htm

Office 2013 Word Keeps Freezing (Not responding)

Anonymous

Hi,

I have just purchased Office 2013 and have used Word for a couple of minutes, but it repeatedly stops responding in specific scenarios.

It is far too buggy for me to migrate from my previous version of Office.

Situations in which it freezes:

Opening the options menu
On start up (when it claims that it is not the default program) - I fixed this one by making it the default program for everything
Closing the word document and choosing not to save
Scrolling through a very long document

Excel does not seem to have the same bugs, and I have successfully reached the options page on that program to turn off graphics acceleration.

The main reason I purchased Office 2013 was for Word and I would really like to have it functioning properly.

I am currently very disappointed and annoyed.

Other (possibly) relevant details

Platform: Windows 7

Other

Microsoft Office 2003

Microsoft 2010 Starter (pre-installed on laptop purchase)

Thanks for the help.

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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88 answers

Anonymous

2013-10-25T11:51:19+00:00

Where do i send my invoice for the 2.5 extra hours I spent working on a document for a client which should have taken 90 minutes but took over twice as long because Word 2013 kept hanging as I was typing or, when it was responding was typing 1..c...h...a...r...a..c...t...e...r...p...e...r...second?

My machine: brand new i5 processor, 6Gb ram, windows 8 Pro, office 365 installed. none of the allegedly conflicting products are installed on this brand new machine, purchased mainly because my other Windows 7 Pro machine was having similar issues with Office 2013.

I could diagnose the issue and the underlying problem in the code, but that's Microsoft's job not mine.

Customer service teams who respond with a cut and paste script are great as they do weed out potential conflicts that lead to issues, but on a brand new machine that only has office on it that is not the case.

I have had similar issues in excel and powerpoint as well as in Word.

the software doesn't work as advertised or as marketed.

it is a defective product.

It must be fixed.

Basically I'm going to have to work over the weekend to catch up on the lost productivity from this productivity suite, which other than this issue I'm reasonably happy with. but if this issue isn't fixed I'll be switching platform.

and as time spent working is time i don't spend with my family it comes at a price. where do I send the invoice?
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Anonymous

2013-10-25T04:51:46+00:00

Good one JDoran.

What I do now is before I quit I hit save at least 10 times, wait a bit, then close the file. Does it always work? No, but this is not high-quality software we are dealing with.

I also split up my large file into small sections and work on them individually. Periodically copying them over into the main document for archiving.

As far as what the engineer asked. LOL is all I can say. His job is to provide functional software, I have another job. I am not going to do his job for him by debugging his program.

My computer is top of the line and has no trouble running very graphics intensive software.

This problem is just going to spread. Soon people will learn that MS Word is not suitable for business use. Hope MS employees have other options job-wise.
Was this answer helpful?

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Anonymous

2013-10-25T03:42:32+00:00

What Doug Robbins is really asking is...

"DO YOU HAVE ANY OTHER SOFTWARE OTHER THAN WORD 2013 RUNNING ON YOUR COMPUTER? MICROSOFT WORD WORKS BEST ON A PC DEDICATED FOR USE BY WORD 2013 ALONE ONLY AFTER A CLEAN INSTALL OF OUR WONDERFUL OPERATING SYSTEM!"
Was this answer helpful?

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Anonymous

2013-10-17T05:09:37+00:00

Thanks for responding to this. One would expect a program that has done word processing for decades would have gotten the bugs worked out, but this random freezing thing is getting old. All I want is a simple word processor. No need for anything fancy, just something reliable that I can write and save. Word used to be that.

The file is docx and yes I have tried repairing it and have copied over the text to a new document and have many many backups in different places.

I cannot reproduce the bug. Just now I opened the file, selected some text to copy and when I closed it the program froze again. I did not make any changes to the text. Just copied some.

So before I move on to another word processor, is there a version of word that is just a word processor? Just something to enter text in but that can handle 50k+ words? No graphics or anything, just words. How hard is that? It needs some formatting such as page breaks and italics and maybe bold, or is that too much to expect from Word now?

It is not just me having this issue so if I was at Microsoft and my biggest cash cow was having issues I would devote every person in the company to solving it and patching it without bothering the customers. It is not my problem that it this program is bugged. If it doesn't work then it is not my responsibility to fix it. I am only complaining because I am in the middle of a project. A few more weeks of random freezing and I will just move the whole thing over to another program and delete Office.

Patch it!!!
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Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2013-10-15T22:57:35+00:00

First thing to do is make a copy of the file.

Then, try copying everything EXCEPT for the final paragraph mark (¶) and paste it into a new document and save that document, then close everything and restart your computer and Word and then open the new document into which you pasted the content of the original and see if the problem occurs with that document. If not, then it would appear that they may have been some form of corruption in the original.

When ever working on a large document, you should make back-up copies of it.

See the following page of fellow MVP Graham Mayor's website:

http://www.gmayor.com/automatically_backup.htm
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