Office professional 2003 - word

Hiya All,

I have had microsoft office professional for a while and everything seemed to be working fine until recently.

Everytime i open word it seems to take about 2 minutes to open when it does i can work perfectly fine in it, but when i close the software it again takes a very long time saves my work but crashes. When it finally closes it sends an error report with no resolution the error report is also not specific but pages and pages of data where i cannot search specifics on the web to resolve this.

The same is happenning to my outlook 2003 when ever i open a message it takes forever especially a draft message and again whenever i close outlook i again get send an error message.

i have unistalled the software and reinstalled it, i have also done a repair but the problem persists, any help will be highly appreciated.

 

Hi Manna,
Have you installed any recent updates or added any new software.
Have you installed all the Office 2003 updates
What operating system are you using
If you are using XP have you installed sp3

I know it's a bunch of questions and no answers but more information is needed so the right solution can be researched.

 

Hia Buggabear,

Thank You for posting a reply. There have been no recent updates or software isntalled, yet my office updates are up to date and i am using windows xp with service pack 3.

its wierd as the problem only persists with word and any software connected to it like outlook, other office software i have is running fine like excel etc.

 

search for the normal.dot file and delete it,
The slowness of word opening is a sign it is corrupted and increasing in size

 

Hi Captain Drift,

Do you know where i would find the file normal.dot? Also as it is beginning to corrupt itself is there nothing i can do to remedy this? Because with this theory should a unistall and a reinstall not do the trick?

 

Try opening Word using the /a switch to see if it opens faster.

From: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/826864

So you would go to My Computer>C:>Program Files>Microsoft Office and find the name of your Office folder either Office/Office10/Office11

and then edit this command to match "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\Winword.exe" /a and put it in the Start>Run box (keep the quotes).

If Word opens much faster it is probably your normal.dot template that is the problem.

 

Hi Sach2,

Thank you ever so much for your help. It is the normal.dot template which is the problem is there a way that i can fix this or would i always have to type in "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\Winword.exe" /a in the start and run box in order for word to open quickly?

 

Hi,

I'll have to read through that link more thoroughly. I just picked out that /a troubleshooting test to help you determine if the normal.dot was indeed the problem.

I'll see if I can find a fix for the normal.dot template. Unless Halo (our Office/Word expert) or Captain Drift gets back to you first.

 

search and delete the normal.dot template, when you next open word after deleting it is recreated fresh
This was a common problem on the Tiny / Time machine I had to support
Searching now on my pc

 

Thanks Sach2, Captain Drift, where do i find the normal.dot template so that i can delete it, would this rectify the problem?

 

D:\Documents and Settings\Captain Drift\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates\normal.dotm
so on yours would be
C:\Documents and Settings\your name \Application Data\Microsoft\Templates

 

I think it might be here C:\Documents and Settings\user name\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates

Microsoft suggest renaming normal.dot rather than deleting. You can always delete it later after you see that Word works OK.

One way to get to the folder would be

Close Word
Start>Run>type in %appdata% hit OK
Then in window that opens go to Microsoft then Templates then rename normal.dot to abnormal.dot
Close window and reopen Word.
See if it works better.

Maybe go back to ...Templates and see if there is a new normal.dot. You can probably leave the abnormal.dot since it is I believe a very small file.

 

Thank You Captain Drift. Sach2 it is working fine now your way helped, thank you. You guys are fantastic, the best and super cool.

 

Glad you got things sorted.

My thanks go to Captain Drift for pointing out the normal.dot template can go bad. And it is recreated if deleted. Good to know.