Office 2013 Word Keeps Freezing (Not responding)

A lot of problems with Office 2013 are caused by third party (non-Microsoft) applications.  This is my (expanding) list of things to try when Office 2013\365 won’t start or crashes:

See the Article “Why can’t I start my Office 2013 application at:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/support/why-cant-i-start-my-office-2013-application-HA104011864.aspx

Refer to the following website for information on repairing Office 2013\365:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project-help/repair-or-remove-office-2010-HA010357402.aspx

See Office 2013 install woes - http://office-watch.com/t/n.aspx?a=1834

See the KnowledgeBase article “Office 2013 applications crash on launch at the splash screen” at:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2813143

Or see the KnowledgeBase article Error: “Something went wrong and we can't sign you in right now” when trying to install Office 2013 at:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2811180/en-us/

Also see my response in

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office\_2013\_release-word/microsoft-word-2013-has-stopped-working/67b81016-849f-481a-bce5-bf04797ac03b

Do you have Abbyy Finereader installed on the PC? A number of people have reported that removing it overcomes problems with 2013.  See:

Office programs may crash with the FineReader add-in installed at:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2755838

Do you have “Fun Tools” add-in? A number of people have reported that removing it overcomes problems with 2013

Do you have Toshiba Book Reader installed on the PC?  It has been reported that uninstalling that brings Office back to working status.

Do you have the Acrobat PDFMaker add-in.  It has been reported that uninstalling that overcomes an issue with a message appearing that states "The document contains macros. Macro support for this application is disabled. Features requiring VBA are not available. Would you like to open this document as a read only?"

Also see: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office\_2013\_release-word/microsoft-word-has-stopped-working-when-i-close/8375b5b6-4f7e-46ed-a02b-90152ecad287#LastReply and

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office\_home-word/word-and-excel-2013-crashing-on-windows-7/5389390c-e989-4c8e-8fe0-62673f1410ce?page=4#LastReply

It appears that there may be some hardware incompatibilities as well.  If you have the NVIDIA driver NVWGF2UM.DLL, try renaming it as: NVWGF2UM.old as was mentioned in:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office\_2013\_release-word/microsoft-word-has-stopped-working-when-i-close/8375b5b6-4f7e-46ed-a02b-90152ecad287#LastReply

From the File tab, select Options and then click on Advanced and then in the Display section of the dialog, check the box for Disable hardware graphics acceleration

For the error message "There was a problem sending the command to the program", use Windows Explorer to access the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15 folder and right click on WINWORD.EXE then on Properties, go to the Compatibility tab and uncheck all the boxes.  It has also been reported that the problem can be overcome by editing the registry at HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Word.Document.12\shell\Open and deleting the ddeexec key.

The ddeexec can also be deleted from

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Word.DocumentMacroEnabled.12\shell\Open.

That fix is described at ...

http://www.dilloway.co.uk/there-was-a-problem-sending-the-command.html

It has been reported that uninstalling FastPictureView and FastPictureViewer Pro… overcomes the issue of the Minimize, Maximize, Close and Help buttons not being visible in Office 2013.

If you have a Canon 8350 printer, try using the Canon MF8000 UFRI LT XPS driver as detail in the post by Riad Amstha on April 14 in the thread at:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office\_365hp-word/office-2013-crashes-with-canon-8350-printer/e2bf6530-92e0-47ef-b6ec-e803a91793d0?page=3#LastReply

Hi all. I have been using word 2013 for a few months and have had no trouble then suddenly a few weeks ago the document I have been working on started freezing when I closed word.

So it saves no problem, but when I close word after saving then it freezes up. It appears that the document is ok since it seems fine when I ctrl-alt-delete and stop word, but I worry that the document is now bugged.

It is a huge document that I have spent a lot of time on and this buggy stuff is really freaking me out. Word is great, and I have used the program for decades. I have never had to worry about losing a document due to program bugs. The program has always been a transparent tool.

I can't reproduce the bug since it does not happen every time I open-save-close the program. Please help or give advice for how to work around it. Is it possible my document will become permanently corrupt?

I am even thinking of printing the whole document out so I can be sure it will not get lost. At least then I can retype it into another word processor.

Hi,

Let me assist you with the issue related to Word 2013.

I need some details to assist you with the issue:

Does this issue occur only with this specific Word document?

What is the format of the Word document, is it saved as .doc or .docx?

Try the steps below:

Try repairing the Word document and verify the result:

You may refer to the link below to know on how to repair the document.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/893672

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918429/en-us

Note: Ensure to back up the document.

Let us know the result.

Thank you.

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

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!!!