Systematic Approach to Behavioral Problems in Word

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Excellent article! Thank you for doing it.

One suggestion in your Second Step. For finding normal.dot, look in Tools, Options, File Locations, user templates. I was at a clients this morning and the user templates location was set to the home drive on the server.

Another note: If Word can not find a normal.dot in the user templates folder, it will check the word program folder, then the workgroup templates folder (if it has been set). If Word finds a normal.dot in either of these places, it will use this instead of creating a new one. (See http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?…kb;EN-US;214215%5B/url%5D for a detailed explanation of the template paths and normal.dot.) I like to get rid of (rename) all the normal.dot files I can find to be sure Word creates a new default one. But Tools, Options, File Locations, user templates is the only way to be sure of the one Word was using when you started trouble shooting to begin with.

Yet another note: With Office 2000/Win2000 and higher, Word will use the startup folder in the user’s profile – this is what will show when you go to the user information in tools, options. (C:documents and settingsusernameapplication datamicrosoftwordstartup) However, Word will also load templates in the startup folder which is created by default in the installation (program filesMicrosoft OfficeOffice10startup – default for Office XP). You need to look in both places.

Remember when you search application data, it is a hidden folder so you have to show hidden files and folders.

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Hi Darryl:
Thanks for the suggestions. I had thought about putting some of that information in, but the article was getting too long already. I’m aware that Tools/Options/File Locations will locate the normal.dot path–problem is they still have to open Explorer to rename normal.dot, so using F3 will be a little faster–unless they have more than one normal.dot. I’ll will try to edit that step to reflect this.

Thanks for the info on Win 2000. I had not considered what happens with hidden folders. In my experience with Win NT & with Win 98, you can find both startup folders & the template folders even if the folder option view is set to hide certain file types. Is this not true with Win 2000?

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With Win 2000, if show hidden files and folders is not checked, then find will NOT find the startup folder.

It is even worse with Win XP. There is a separate setting in Find which ignores the setting in explorer. You have to find the option to “search hidden files and folders”. You have to first click, “more advanced options”, then you can select “search hidden files and folders”.

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Why is it when Microsoft makes a feature harder to use, it sticks? I still don’t like the fact that I have to click “more” in the Find/Replace dialog box to get to stuff I could easily use in Word 6. Ah well, thanks for the information.

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Hi Phil,

Just to detour off the main subject since we already strayed: I do a lot of Word teaching. Find/Replace, as you know, is a very powerful tool. But beginner’s are intimidated by all the checkboxes and don’t even know what “wildcards” are. So opening Word F/R as it was in Word 6 (95?) for a teacher can lead to a whole lot of unneeded questions. At the beginner level, I’d bet that >90% of the use of F/R is to find one word and replace it with another. It’s only when you appreciate styles that you can start to worry about finding a style and replacing it with another style. Trying to explain wildcards to a beginner is just too much – usually they can’t even think of how to postulate a find involving expressions, etc. The idea of abbreviated menus and having toolbars share one row, per Office 2000, was a step in this direction although I don’t like it. (I was recently teaching Excel and had to have people/beginners arrange their toolbars so they were on separate rows – major detour in class. Imagine saving one toolbar row when your spreadsheet might have 65K rows!) At least this is my experience.

For me, I’d appreciate having the More button already clicked when I open F/R. Just one more item to add to my list of things for an AutoOpen macro for operating the way I’d like. Some day.

But I rant on. Forgive me.

Fred

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Edited by HansV to remove link that no longer worked

Note: While the steps below work in Word 2002 & 2003, each of these versions has a troubleshooting tool that automates the process (except for deleting temp files). You can read about & download the Word 2002 and 2003 Support Template. My thanks to Rebel for pointing out these tools.

Systematic Method of Fixing Common Problems & the Data Key
I’ve seen a number of questions in Woody’s Lounge, Word Forum that require the same systematic approach to solving. The usual symptom is some strange behavior in Word that hasn’t occurred before & occurs with most documents. I’ve replaced my Data key about a dozen times. Here’s some more detailed info on how to do it: The problem that the MRU doesn’t update correctly tends to be a sign that the DATA key in the registry is corrupt. However, weird behavior from Word can often be caused by temp files, a corrupt normal template or an add-in that is corrupt or incompatible, so these should be checked first, since they are much easier to do.

FIRST STEP: If you haven’t done so already, delete all your temp files.
1. Do the following, after closing all open applications:
2. Click an empty spot on the taskbar & press F3.
3. Make sure that the look in box is your primary hard drive & that “include subfolders” is ticked.
4. Type
*.tmp;~*.do?;~*.wbk
in the “named” box & search.
5. Then delete all these temp files.

I actually delete
~*.*,*.tmp
but warning, there are some programs that actually create & use files that start with a tilde. And some people name files to start with ~ so that it brings it to the top of the list. If so, you could be deleting important files.

SECOND STEP: If that doesn’t correct the problem, try this next step:
1. Start Word from the Start/Run menu & type

winword.exe /a

Then press “enter”. Note that there is a space before the /a. This starts Word without any add-ins, global templates, or normal.dot. Does the problem go away? If not, then neither renaming normal.dot nor the third step should help either. You can then try the fourth step. If the problem did go away, then:

2. Close Word.
3. Use Windows Find to locate normal.dot
a. Click an empty spot on the taskbar & press F3.
b. Make sure that the look in box is your primary hard drive & that “include subfolders” is ticked.
c. Type normal.dot in the “named” box & search.

4. Right click normal.dot & rename to normal.old
5. Restart Word
If the problem goes away, you had a corrupt normal.dot. If not:

THIRD STEP: Disabling Add-ins (Global Templates & COM Add-Ins)
1. Use Find again to locate both your Word & Office startup folder by typing “startup” (no quotes) in step c. above. For an alternative way of finding all the add-ins & coms that are currently loaded, insert the field

{ddeauto winword system topics}

into your document, select it, & press F9 to update the field. Note: the curly brackets are inserted by pressing Ctrl+F9, not by typing. This field was discussed by Woody in WOW-MM#3.24, WOW #7.49, & WOW# 7.51.
2. Drag everything out of the folder onto your desktop & restart Word. If this corrects the problem, it’s one of the add-ins that you dragged onto your desktop.
3. Close Word & drag each add-in back into the startup folder, one at a time, opening Word & testing after each one, & then closing Word. When the problem reappears, you will have located the add-in causing the problem.

NOTE: It is possible for a COM Add-In to be loaded without it showing up in the COM Add-Ins… dialog box. (You can find this box by going to Tools/Customize/Commands tab/ & click the Tools menu under Categories & you’ll see COM Add-Ins… on the right. Drag it to any menu or toolbar.) You can use the following macro from http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?…kb;en-us;307479%5B/url%5D to view such COM Add-Ins

Code:

Sub ListAddins()

   Dim MyAddin As COMAddIn
   Dim i As Integer, msg As String

   For Each MyAddin In Application.COMAddIns
      msg = msg & MyAddin.Description & " - " & MyAddin.ProgID & vbCrLf
   Next

   MsgBox msg

End Sub

FOURTH STEP: Delete the Data Key
If this didn’t work, you should delete your Data key & let Word rebuild it. I would use the following steps:

1. Back up all your options. Go to Tools/Options & make a change…any change, preferably on each tab. Go to Tools/AutoCorrect/ & make a change on each tab. I usually change the first checkbox on each tab. Don’t worry! Your not going to leave it this way. Now record a macro (name it, e.g. MyOptions) & then go to each of the tabs & change it back the way you want. Then stop the recording & save the macro in any template. By the way, I would do this even if you don’t have any problems. Any time you want to restore all your options, you can run the macro.

2. Back up the registry. (I don’t, but everyone says to do this. Besides, I do a lot of things I later regret .)

The easiest way to backup your Registry is from the Start Menu, choose Run and type “scanregw” (no quotes). Keep in mind that Windows makes backups of the Registry automatically every day when you boot your PC. Last 5 backups are kept, overwriting any previous copies. If you backup using scanregw, the file will be replaced in five days. As an alternative, you can use the “Export Registry File” option in Regedit.

If you need to restore your registry later, go to:

Start/Shut Down, click “Restart in MS-DOS mode”, when in dos type SCANREG and hit enter, it will probably tell you there is nothing wrong and you don’t need to restore, but you can override it by clicking VIEW BACKUPS, highlighting the backup that you wish to restore (by the time/date stamp), and click the RESTORE button, after it restores your registry, it will reboot into MS-DOS mode again, this time type EXIT and hit enter, this will take you back to Windows.

3. Close Word. Go to Start/Run & type REGEDIT. With Word 97, navigate to

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice8.0WordData

OR, if you’re using Word 2000, go to

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice9.0WordData

& either rename or delete the key. Restart Word & the key will be rebuilt. You will lose your customized options, but that’s why you recorded a macro first. You can run the macro & restore your options easily.

AFTER YOU’VE REBUILT THE DATA KEY:

1. There are five other changes that take place. Your standard & formatting toolbars will share one line. If you use these two toolbars & don’t like that option, click Tools/Customize… & untick “Standard & Formatting Toolbars share one row”.
2. Clipit may reappear (sometimes it doesn’t). If you don’t like to use clipit, you also have to press F1, choose Options on Clipit, then the Option tab, & untick “Use the Office Assistant”.
3. The third change is that you lose all your MRU files on the Files menu.
4. You will lose all your files on the Work menu.
5. Lastly, all your non-global add-ins (the ones that aren’t in the startup folder) are removed from Tools/Templates & add-ins.

What I’ve done is after I restore my Work menu & my Tools/Templates & add-ins, I go back to the registry, select the Data key, & export it. Hopefully, it’s not corrupt at this point & I can restore it the next time it corrupts.

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Thanks for the suggestion Phil. It didn’t work either unfortunately.

I’m still trying to find out how Microsoft thinks the Custom styles display should work. Maybe it’ll be a bit like the peculiarities of the numbering system in that if you do things in a certain order (and hold your tongue in a particular way) then it works ok, usually. I can’t find any documentation on it however. Do you know of any?

As I said before it seems to be that setting “Styles to be Visible” to Show All or Hide All is the genesis of the problem. Somehow it seems to remove Word’s ability to recognise which styles are built-in, which are in the document and which are user-created.

Regards,

Jim.

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Yes, please make your warning bigger about ~*.*,*.tmp
We have many people that share systems, and several know to use ~ ‘ – and _ in front of a folder name, to make it sort to the top of a list. The inexperienced person trying to help, could blow away entire folders with a generic search and delete on ~*.*

Thanks,
TP

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Thank you. Good suggestion. I’ve modified it.

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Especially since you are telling people to do a system wide search and destroy, not just a temp folder search and destroy. Imagine if Theresa Michelle Pfeiffer didn’t hide extensions, and named some of her files whatever.tmp? I see the same scary universal search and destroy over at The Office Experts board. Someone’s going to lose a boatload of data sometime.

For what it’s worth

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Hi Phil

I have been using Word for several years (about 5% of its capability)

I don

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>> What symptoms would I be experiencing?

Word not operating correctly (or not at all)

>> What is the Data Key?

An entry in the Windows Registry that holds many of your personal settings. For historical reasons, it is stored in an oldfashioned way that is vulnerable to becoming corrupt.

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>> What symptoms would I be experiencing?

Word not operating correctly (or not at all)

>> What is the Data Key?

An entry in the Windows Registry that holds many of your personal settings. For historical reasons, it is stored in an oldfashioned way that is vulnerable to becoming corrupt.

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Hi Phil

I have been using Word for several years (about 5% of its capability)

I don

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Thanks for the post. Helped me work through and fix problem with word 2003.

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Thank You

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A tilde is a fussy little thing, foreign to many without computer experience, and it is easily overlooked, depending on your screen or printout formats.

Your ‘FIRST STEP’ is big and very bold, especially on my printout, your bold red ‘warning’ is easily spotted, but what if an author has a single partition with files in the default location and no backup and reads your deletion instruction as ‘*.do?’ because he overlooked the tilde that precedes it? THAT is where I take exception to your formatting, and yes, I nearly did it myself (the reading part, that is, and it is very light on my printout).

An invaluable post.

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Hi Phil

Missing Menus and Tool Bars?
O2k,Word 9.0.6929 SP-3

I opened Word today and had no Menus and Tool Bars, top lines looks like:

Line 1 – W Document1

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Initially I added gg-normal.dot to my STARTUP to contain the custom standard and formatting toolbars I created. Most of the additional icons were pulled from the All Commands area. Some were macros assigned to icons (expand .2pt, condense .2pt, paste special, etc.). This dot file conflicted with my Adobe 8 professional so I removed it from STARTUP.

However, I DID need these icons for productivity, so I started to incorporate them into my normal.dot toolbars. Now Word is giving me an error message not telling me it must close or not responding. When I delete the normal and Word rebuilds the normal.dot it seems to work ok.

Attached is document based on my gg-normal.dot which contains all the stuff I put into my new normal.dot before thing went crazy. Any thought on what the conflicting/bad elements are on the toolbars? This is driving me crazy… any help would be greatly appreciated.

Georgette

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If you’ve removed gg-normal.dot, make sure that there is no reference in your Normal.dot to gg-normal.dot in Tools | References, this would show up as MISSING and cause problems.

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I do NOT see a Tools|Reference on my drop down to check, but I do not seem to be having problems with the Word-generated normal.dot.

The problem begins when I begin to customize MY normal.dot to include icons/shortcuts/macros that I had in my gg-normal.dot. How do I troubleshoot what icon, shortcut, or macro is causing the problem. The gg-normal_TOOLBARS.doc file that I attached with the toolbars floating was based on my gg-normal.dot

TIA,
Georgette

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Tools | References is in the Visual Basic Editor, not in Word itself.

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Hans , I will give it a go and let you know.

Thanks

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You should reply to the relevant post.

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Hi Phil

I’m new to all of this, so if I am doing anything wrong, please let me know.

I have a query regarding compatibility. My settings are set to Microsoft Office Word 2003 for recommended options, and that’s all working fine. The question I have to ask is this. If a document comes in and the compatibility options are something other than this, how can I force each document when opened to revert to my compatibility settings?

Regards

Angie

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Hi Angie,

You can add the following lines to the AutoOpen macro from post 720,872:

With ActiveDocument
.Compatibility(wdNoTabHangIndent) = False
.Compatibility(wdNoSpaceRaiseLower) = False
.Compatibility(wdPrintColBlack) = False
.Compatibility(wdWrapTrailSpaces) = False
.Compatibility(wdNoColumnBalance) = False
.Compatibility(wdConvMailMergeEsc) = False
.Compatibility(wdSuppressSpBfAfterPgBrk) = False
.Compatibility(wdSuppressTopSpacing) = False
.Compatibility(wdOrigWordTableRules) = False
.Compatibility(wdTransparentMetafiles) = False
.Compatibility(wdShowBreaksInFrames) = False
.Compatibility(wdSwapBordersFacingPages) = False
.Compatibility(wdLeaveBackslashAlone) = True
.Compatibility(wdExpandShiftReturn) = True
.Compatibility(wdDontULTrailSpace) = True
.Compatibility(wdDontBalanceSingleByteDoubleByteWidth) = True
.Compatibility(wdSuppressTopSpacingMac5) = False
.Compatibility(wdSpacingInWholePoints) = False
.Compatibility(wdPrintBodyTextBeforeHeader) = False
.Compatibility(wdNoLeading) = False
.Compatibility(wdNoSpaceForUL) = True
.Compatibility(wdMWSmallCaps) = False
.Compatibility(wdNoExtraLineSpacing) = False
.Compatibility(wdTruncateFontHeight) = False
.Compatibility(wdUsePrinterMetrics) = False
.Compatibility(wdSubFontBySize) = False
.Compatibility(wdWW6BorderRules) = False
.Compatibility(wdExactOnTop) = False
.Compatibility(wdSuppressBottomSpacing) = False
.Compatibility(wdWPSpaceWidth) = False
.Compatibility(wdWPJustification) = False
.Compatibility(wdLineWrapLikeWord6) = False
.Compatibility(wdShapeLayoutLikeWW8) = False
.Compatibility(wdFootnoteLayoutLikeWW8) = False
.Compatibility(wdDontUseHTMLParagraphAutoSpacing) = False
.Compatibility(wdDontAdjustLineHeightInTable) = True
.Compatibility(wdForgetLastTabAlignment) = False
.Compatibility(wdAutospaceLikeWW7) = False
.Compatibility(wdAlignTablesRowByRow) = False
.Compatibility(wdLayoutRawTableWidth) = False
.Compatibility(wdLayoutTableRowsApart) = False
.Compatibility(wdUseWord97LineBreakingRules) = False
.Compatibility(wdDontBreakWrappedTables) = False
.Compatibility(wdDontSnapTextToGridInTableWithObjects) = False
.Compatibility(wdSelectFieldWithFirstOrLastCharacter) = False
.Compatibility(wdApplyBreakingRules) = False
.Compatibility(wdDontWrapTextWithPunctuation) = False
.Compatibility(wdDontUseAsianBreakRulesInGrid) = False
.Compatibility(wdUseWord2002TableStyleRules) = False
.Compatibility(wdGrowAutofit) = False
End With

(I generated this code by recording a macro, I didn’t write all those lines myself!)

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That’s worked a treat, thanks very much AGAIN!!

Angie

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