re-installing MS Word

I am having difficulty with MS Word. It suddenly crashed & I can't open it. I think the answer is to un-install & then re-install. If I do that, are all my documents protected, or will they be gone with a re-install?

 

Hi, Lynne!

Welcome to Major Geeks!

The FIRST thing you need to know is this: No part of Word works correctly (or at all!) if your NORMAL.DOT (the main template) is corrupted, and the Normal.dot file is very easily corrupted.

SO, ... find your Normal.dot (it shd be under Documents & Settings\yourusername\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates) and COPY (do not move) it to any other folder of your choice.

Now that you have a copy of it where you can find it, DELETE the original file.

Now start Word. It will re-create your Normal.dot file where the original was, and it should run normally.

There is no loss of documents or data with this fix, but if you have customized any toolbars or special settings, you will probably have to re-do those after Word is running again. It's a small price to pay to get your Word back.

If Word doesn't run perfectly when it has recreated Normal.dot, you can come back, and we'll try from there.

 

Thanx, Halo. I hope she comes back for both our posts.

 

Thank you both. I'll try the repair first (after I copy the file you mentioned). If that does not work, then I'll go for the un-install, re-install. I can burn to a CD, so I'll do that with any important documents.
Thanks again.
Lynne

 

Come back and let us know, please.

 

OK!!! I used the first suggestion, to copy the Normal.dot file to a different folder & then start Word. And it worked just fine! Thank you both so much! I love this list... what I was really dreading turned out to be a snap to fix.
Lynne

 

Whoopee doopee doo!

Glad you get 'er, Lynne.

Keep that trick in your memory bank, cuz Normal.dot is SO critical to Word and SO easy to corrupt ... that you'll prolly need to use it again.

A good idea: once you get toolbars and keyboard shortcuts and switches and all that custom-set in Word (they're ALL stored in Normal.dot!), make a fresh copy of Normal.dot in another folder once a week or so. Just delete last week's (but not the original one in Templates!) copy and put a new copy in your storage folder.

That way, when (not IF) Word breaks suddenly, you just wipe the (corrupted) Normal.dot in Templates, copy the stored Normal.dot TO Templates, and start Word. Everything will be as it was the last time you backed up your Normal.dot.

Happy Word-ing!

 

I'll do that. I am a little surprised at this because I've been using Word for years & have never had this happen. The fix for this one will go in my permanent "check here first" file!