Exceeded maximum number of pages on Word

Anonymous
2019-12-10T03:29:26+00:00

Just today I began receiving an error message that states "You have exceeded the maximum number of pages supported by Word or this document may be damaged..."

Opening up a tried and true file that's been in use for the last 3 months...including just fine not 3 days ago (no updates to the file, nor a related template version from which the new file was constructed) Latest version of Office 365.

Symptoms beyond the error is that the file will not display in print view. File will not save. Will not print. Will not export.

Verified on multiple Win10 machines with latest updates and patches (as of this post). Tried it on an older computer that hasn't been used or updated since September. File works fine.

Saw older posts reference this issue, but nothing since 2014. Tried all those troubleshooting steps, so please don't reply with a link to a clearly outdated KB article.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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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Anonymous
2019-12-20T07:21:55+00:00

Hi All,

Thanks for all your effort in this thread.

As this thread has multiple replies, to help the user who having the same issue, I would like to make a quick summary on this issue:

Issue symptom:

After updating your Office to the version 1911, when using Word to work on the document with multiple pages, you might receive the error: "You have exceeded the maximum number of pages supported by MS Word."

 

Issue environment:

Office 365 Business Version 1911 (Build 12228.20364 Click to Run) Monthly Channel

Office 2016 Professional Plus 1911 (Build 1228.20364 Click to Run) Monthly Channel

Solution:

Thanks for Matt's confirmation, this issue seems to be resolved after he updating his Office application to the Monthly Targeted Channel version 1912 Build 12325.20172. As this is an insider update channel, we do not suggest updating into this channel as it has certain risks.

However, since the fix has been deployed in the insider channel, this means it will be roll out to the Monthly users in the future updates, please wait patiently. Thanks for your understanding.

Note: Join the insider channel require you to be an Office 365 subscriber, so if you are using Office 2016 Professional Plus(which is an One-Time purchase product), you won't be able to join the insider channel at this time. 

Workaround:

As Renato mentioned, he was benefit from the this thread. Although this is a Mac thread, but the method could be also applied to the Windows side. Here is the workaround:

1.Open the issued document, wait until the error prompt "You have exceeded the maximum number of pages.. " prompt out.

2.Leave the error prompt alone, create a new blank document.

3.Copy the content in the issued document and paste it to the blank document we just created.

4.Save&Close the new document. And open it again, check if the issue still persist.

Again, we greatly appreciate for all your effort in this thread.

Regards,

Alex Chen

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-01-14T07:45:35+00:00

    If the document is not too large to attach to an email message, send me a copy of it that way, referencing this thread in the covering email message and I will see if I can recover your document.

    Alternatively, upload a copy of the document to the following folder of my OneDrive

    https://1drv.ms/f/s!AmuIXmFDy-1a8nP3RpgnYHp-5zXK

    and send me an email to the address shown in my signature to let me know that it is there.

    Doug fixed my problem.

    He put the document in draft mode and copied everything except the last paragraph marker into a new document.

    It has made the file manageable again.

    Thanks, Doug!

    Marty

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-01-14T07:42:59+00:00

    Rohn,

    Thanks.

    Doug Robbins, MVP, fixed the file for me.

    He says that he put it in Draft mode (which happens automatically with Office 365 when the error message appears), then copied everything except the last paragraph marker to a new document.

    I haven't begun to proofread the fixed file, but at least the page numbers are reasonable now and I can see it in print view, which will allow me to access the headers.

    Marty

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-01-14T02:14:39+00:00
    1. No, not all files have the same problem.

    .

    Since the problem is limited to one file, it sounds like that file has been corrupted some how.  Last month it was due to a problem in the program.  But your version is beyond the version identified as a fix in the following link. The update may not completely fix the problem.

    2019 12 19- "You have exceeded the maximum number of pages supported by Word or this document may be damaged..."

    https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_word-mso_win10-mso_o365b/exceeded-maximum-number-of-pages-on-word/4776f2c8-1349-437e-94ae-349a13922446

    This appears to be related to an Office update earlier in the month. Restoring Office to an earlier version fixed the problem.  Installing Office Insider also fixed the problem (ie MS has a code fix that has not yet been rolled out to everyone).

    Manual Workaround:

    <snip>

    I was getting that same message about exceeding the maximum pages in word.

    This started right after I updated my MS Word to the latest.

    And I was also opening a document that I had not changed in months.

    It would start calculating the pages in the doc, which should have been 11, and then would crash and the page count, in the corner of the screen would say something like 7,000.

    Here is what fixed it for me.

    I opened the word doc, and it started calculating the number of pages.

    Before it could get very far, I switched to Draft mode, which I am guessing stops that counting.

    Now I could look around in the document without it freezing or crashing.

    So what I noticed, in my case, is that I had a section break that was set to link back to the previous section break, but I had deleted that section break.

    I noticed that it would never let me scroll past the third section break in my doc, so I figured that maybe that one was the troublemaker.

    So, I just started looking at the settings of each section break. When I got to the bad one, it was set to link to previous and "section break continuous.".

    The strange part is, I don't ever use link to previous. And I didn't want continuous, I wanted next page.

    Changed both of those settings to how I wanted them and then smooth sailing.

    But I also made a copy of the file and tried just deleting the bad section break.

    That also worked for me.

    </snip>

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-01-13T20:46:09+00:00
    1. Could you provide the Product Information and version of Word? You can go to Word > File > Account and provide the screenshot of it.
    2. Do all files have the same problem? You can create a new file to check if the same problem will occur.
    3. Could you provide the screenshot of the error message?

    Best regards,

    Madoc

    1. No, not all files have the same problem.

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