I run Word 2007 on Vista. Today I hit a curious problem. Word opened, but something was badly wrong. I could not select text with the mouse. The document scroll bar did not work. Word crashed on exit. And going into Options - Addins, I could not navigate beyond the “Popular” section.
After several crashes an Office Diagnostics wizard popped up and offered to help. Kind of it. It chugged through numerous tests and finally told me it could not see anything wrong. Never mind.
Checking the newgroups, I found fellow-sufferers but no solution. I decided to be methodical. I started Word in safe mode. (winword /a). It worked. Probably an add-in. I went to the COM add-ins and tried to disable them. Message: “The connected state of Office add-ins registered in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE cannot be changed”. OK, registry then. Navigated to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins
Found three add-ins listed. I changed the value of the LoadBehavior key from 3 to 0 for each add-in.
Word now worked OK, but still crashed on closing. I found I could restore two of the add-ins without problems. The guilty party: OfficePrintAddIn, a component of Flash Paper.
I had a look at active templates. There was one called FlashPaperWordUITemplate.2302.dot. If I tried to unload it, Word crashed. Perhaps it needs the related COM add-in to be loaded. I closed Word, found the template file, and deleted it. Everything is fine now.
A quicker route might be to uninstall Macromedia Flash Paper, unless you use this of course.
I’m still puzzled about why this problem only showed up today. I’d not made any changes to Flash Paper or Word that I’m aware of. And I don’t blame Macromedia (now Adobe) for this; Word 2007 did not exist when this Flash add-in was released.
Posted in the hope that it saves someone else some time.
Flash Paper or Flash Player?
I’ve never heard of Flash Paper. Sounds fun. Except I’ve no idea why you’d want Flash in a word processor…
>>>After several crashes an Office Diagnostics wizard popped up and offered to help.
You make it sound like Mr Clippy offering to help you write a letter :-).
It is really important to point out that when anything crashes in Windows and the “Send this error report to Microsoft” dialog is generated then we should be hitting the Send button. Microsoft takes the information from this tool and use it to fix problems.
Regards
John
Roundtrip Solutions
> Flash Paper
It’s Flash Paper. At the time we thought Macromedia wanted to compete with Acrobat…
Tim
It appears that many different types of add-ins are causing this. For me the culprit was a Laserfiche add-in. So the question becomes, is this a problem with Word or is it a problem with the add-ins?
This blog entry saved me from going insane. As soon as I disabled the LF plug in, Word worked as it should. Whether or not it’s Microsoft’s fault for not supporting the LF plugin, it’s definitely their fault for not failing gracefully.
I had 2 desktops running Office 2007 on Vista and both within a couple of days of other had word crashing on starting up. I could not rectify the problem with inbuilt MS office diagnostics help, neither would reinstalling Office help. On one I had to install Office 2003 to enable schoolkid to complete homework.On the other desktop I failed to uninstall Office and problem is unresolved. Meanwhile I had been building another windows vista desktop onto which I installed Office 12 as well. Word crashed on startup after about 72 hrs of use. I cannot locate normal.dot file to change it. It’s getting somewhat scary that a well established program is behaving in such a manner.
I was in the office beta program. In beta1 there was an issue when I started up word it was always zooming to 15%. Pretty annoying. Now I had both mouse and crash issues with word. Reinstall did not help. I also found that mouse and select problems were caused by plugins. Not the one mentioned here. Crash was still there, not being able to get rid off it.
I found this trick in my emails with the beta team.
It helped me:
. Close Word and Outlook
2. Start / Run and type regedit
3. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Data
4. Rename this key.
5. Restart Word
Well I’ve looked over the replies and tried to replicate it to my setup. But no luck.
I’m running Windows XP and office 2007. When I use word, it’s using just about 50% CPU ALL the time? It locks up every now and then, it’s impossible to save, unless I change the document name.
So basically I can work around 5 minutes and thats it??
I just hate the new office word…. why must it be so hard to make something work thats so old???
I’m going back to using notes…. LOL
I did what Bence suggested and it fixed my Word Crashes.
Thanks Tonnes..
Thank you, thank you, thank you! My identical problem in Vista and Word was with SnagIt7 as an add-in for Word. Once I followed your instructions I was able to get the mouse working once again. I’m still having the same problem with closing Word, of course. I am contacting the SnagIt people to let them know since they have been so responsive. The independent program SnagIt works perfectly, and I can still capture screens in Word, so nothing lost, and a lot gained - my mouse and my sanity (at least part of it).
I am having this same problem but I am WAAAYYY less avy than all of you…when your directions say ‘4. Rename this key.’ what should I remane it?
Thanks
A
> 4. Rename this key.’ what should I remane it?
The idea is to remove the key. Rename it to anything you like, say olddata. Alternatively you could delete it; people suggest renaming because it gives you an easy route back if something goes wrong.
Tim
I’ve been looking around at fixes online but I am using Vista…. I don’t have a ‘run’ option when I click the start menu. Any ideas?
A
On Vista just typing Regedit in the search box (bottom of Start menu) usually does it. Or press Windows key and R to bring up a Run box.
Tim
Yeah Thanks it worked!
A
I’ve been having this problem for the past couple weeks and have been searching everywhere for a solution. Just tried the regedit trick that Bence mentioned and it seems to have worked.
thanks for the info
Bence - Thank you! You solved a problem that the Microsoft Partner help desk could not!
thanks, the fixed worked after much frustration, but now my reference feature no longer works. I love that feature in 2007. Any idea on getting it back?
This was absolutely my problem. Changed the load option in registry for OfficePrintAddIn and I’m mousing again! Only wish I would have found your blog 6 hours ago. Many thanks as it kept me from resorting to a complete reinstall. Now to find that FlashPaperWordUITemplate.2302.dot culprit and get rid of that annoying message.
back again … Were you able to get the Word Options navigation beyond “Popular” to work? This is still in-op for me. Also, was unable to locate the flash template. Any ideas on location?
Yes, all the Word Options now show up here.
The template was in: c:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Macromedia\Macromedia FlashPaper\OfficeTemplates\FlashPaperWordUITemplate.2302.dot
Hi guys,
read this thread with interest. I have deleted the flashpaper template etc etc, and yet when I start Word the template still shows up in the word add-ins area. How can this be? There are no related add-ins listed in the registry either. I also have another add-in namely RoboHook.wll, which I also deleted and yet this too still shows up in the add-ins area in the Word 2007 Ooptions dialog.
Have you any idea as to why these two add-ins are still showing up even after I’ve deleted them andthey don’t show in the registry?
thanks
Thank you so much for posting this. I have been looking everywhere for the fix for this. It was the “Print to Laserfiche” plugin that was causing my problems.
Hey guys,
Found a solution from Microsoft:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B921541
Delete the word data registry key.
This was corrupted in my case. ONce I had followed these instructions and deleted the key Word 2007 worked perfectly.
The reg fix took care of my Laserfiche problem - Thanks Much!! After 2 re-installs of Office and an attempted system restore point, I was beginning to think the only fix would be a complete reload!
Incidentally, prior to finding this thread, I tried the MS fix mentioned in the previous post by Mark and it didn’t do anything to fix the issue.
Hi everyone!
I’ve been driving myself crazy over this problem for a couple weeks now. I finally decided to re-install Office completely. Of course that didn’t work.
But deleting the word data registry key fixed it perfectly (check out Mark’s comment - #24).
Take care,
Andrew
Note #7 solved the problem for me, I just renamed the ‘data’ folder ‘ data2.’ Everything seems to be working just fine now. Here are the instructions from Bence Arendas, #7:
Close Word and Outlook
2. Start / Run and type regedit
3. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Data
4. Rename this key.
5. Restart Word
THANK YOU SO MUCH! I have been everywhere looking for this fix. I managed to remove the SnagIt addin from Word and all my problems were over. I found this, which helped:
—
To disable SnagIt 8 (and some versions of 7), close out of all open programs and go to “Start > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs”, click once on SnagIt from the list of installed programs, and click on the Change button. In the SnagIt Setup box, click Modify, then choose Next. Click the down arrow next to the Word add-in and choose Entire feature will be unavailable. This should remove the SnagIt addin from Word.
—
Hope this helps someone.
Hi Sam,
Thank you and everyone else in this thread, as this solution worked for me too. I’ve been hitting my head up against the wall (2nd time this has happened!) and couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t select text, etc. I re-installed, too, but the only fix is to rename the folder as you stated.
Glad it worked - but it makes me a dubious MSFT Office 2007 user.
Tim, thank you so much for posting your fix…you should be sent presents and run for your public office. This problem drove me crazy for the last 5 days.
The fix worked great!
Thanks,
It took me two days to find this blog - but deleting the data key in the registry fixed my word mouse problems and my crash when shutting down. Vista - Office 2007 - Adobe CS3
Thanks to Bence!!!! Renaming the data key worked.
Have a great weekend all.
Worked great for me too!! thank you!!
cheers to tim and to bence #7!!!
I had the same problem. Vista + word2007. By deleting the word data key I could solve the Problem. Thanks !
Wilfried aus Weingarten, Germany
Mark’s entry: #25 has the complete answer:
Hey guys,
Found a solution from Microsoft:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B921541
Brilliant - thanks very much indeed, perfect solution and my mouse now works in Word again.
I second all of you guys - absolutely brialliant. Just when I thought I was going crazy….you all found the solution. Kudos.
Word 2007 running on Vista was crashing upon exit and I was unable to highlight text. This occured after installing Adobe Acrobat 8.0 as part of the Adobe Creative Suite 3.
The highlighting text problem was resolved by disabling the plugins - HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins and the crashing upon exit by deleting the data file - HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Data
Thank you so much…
My husband was having this problem on his machine at work and it was driving him nuts. I tried this solution and it worked! Thank you!!!
Here is what I did
1) Go to your control pannel
2) Uninstall or change a programe
3) view installed updates
4) Remove the last security update
Word should work after that that last security has the error
I had the same VERY annoying problem with Word 2007 navigation bars not functioning and select not working either. I found a working solution in the MS KB. The solution is here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/921541
The nature of the solution is to delete the MS Word “DATA” registry entry that apparently (too easily) gets corrupted.
Thank you for figuring out the fix for this problem, I was going nuts with it. I had to uninstall Flash Paper, which is fine cause I didn’t use it at all.
Very helpful
i had a problem with the live meeting template and would crash even on the removal, had to change the normal template to a temp one and save it and then re-do and then remove and put back to get it to work
Thanks Tim and Bence! #7 That surely kept my number one end user (my husband)happy when I applied the regedit solution. I didn’t need to uninstall any add-ins.
Tim and Bence,
Thanks! The regedit trick worked. It eliminated both the mouse problems and the crash on close problems.
I find it interesting that the KB article was not at the top of the Google search.
Thanks
Jim
Two comments (a) thanks to Tim for decent SEO - my “Word 2007 crashing” search yielded his site and (b) thanks to Bence for the solution.
My symtoms were very similar -except an additional one which was when opening a docuement by clicking on the doc, Word would load but the document wouldn’t load - then it would crash as described here.
thanks all,
Hi:
I just got a Vista laptop with Word 2007 … everytime I start Word, within 30 secs - 1 minute the program says it has encountered an error and the program needs to shut down.
Any suggestions? I read through this thread, but couldn’t figure out if any of the solutions presented applied specifically to my problem.
Sam
You are probably better off asking in a Word newsgroup or taking this up with your supplier.
That said, there are two things you should try. First, try running in safe mode. To do this, hold down the control key when starting Word, and accept the offer of safe mode. Is Word stable? If so, there is probably an add-in you need to disable.
Second, try renaming normal.dot. This resets a number of options and can fix problems. See here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822005
Tim
Thanks for this! If it helps anyone - I had to ‘Run winword.exe as Administrator’ in order to actually access the Trust Center tab of Word options.
Once I disabled plug-ins my mouse came back.
Thx!
Tim -
Thanks for your input.
Which Word forum would you suggest?
Try here (hope the link works).
Tim
A possibly related problem is driving me crazy. I’m running Word 2003 under Vista. Whenever I close the last instance of Word (either Word itself or Outlook, which is using Word as its e-mail editor) a WINWRD.EXE process immediately takes over about 50% of my CPU. I can fix this in Task Manager by ending the rogue process, but it would be great to find the root cause. Thanks.
Your a star!! Flashpaper was causing this for me as well.. Thanks
Thanks so much Bence, I have no idea why my plugin stopped working suddenly but. Now word is closing and I am able to select text again. the culprit program was abbyy pdf transformer. Once uninstalled no problem.
ref: Mouse does not respond properly in Word 2007
A combination of the inputs worked for me -
Part 1 - got my mouse working
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins
Found three add-ins listed. I changed the value of the LoadBehavior key from 3 to 0 for each add-in.
Part 2 - stopped word from crashing on exit
. Close Word and Outlook
2. Start / Run and type regedit
3. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Data
4. Rename this key.
5. Restart Word
Thanks to all of you. My mouse stopped working in Word for no reason - nothing new installed. All the steps in #7 worked for me. I renamed the folder Data2 instead of deleting it.
I also had the same problem as #47 - double clicking a document opened Word, but not the document, although then File/Open worked okay. Now I can use the mouse AND double-click a document to open it.
Thanks you sooooooo much. Couldn’t select the word options or use the mouse on documents and word crashed on close all the time. Registry key and removing the flashpaper add in and template cured all. Tim you’re up front description was great.
Thanks again all.
LaserFiche strikes again, had to start word in safe mode, remove the cursed add in, and all is good.
have had a serious problem like most users. i have been using microsoft office 2007 for over 2 weeks everthing had been working great. then suddently the mouse started freezing and stalling, cannot highlight, and scroll down on word or outlook note page.
i have tried all solutions posted on most websites. cant find an answer to my problem till now. please advise me if you have had a similar problem and have manage to solve it.
Vishal, delete the data key as described in comment 7 above.
Tim
Bence you fixed my crash problems as well. Thanks
Godsend. Bence’s instructions coupled with original post solved my problems.
removing the FlashPaperWordUITemplate.2302 did not resolve the crashing problem.
After playing with all option for 6 hours, the startegy that resolved all problems was:
Disable the file - OfficePrintAddIn which is listed in the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins
Dont change your DATA or OPTION registry.
Word came back to full life - and I went to sleep….
Hi,
the exact same problem here. Manifested this morning with no apparent reason. Tried Bence’s advice on comment #7, and all is peachy now.
A million thank yous!
Thank thank you Bence! I thought i was going mad!
Thanks - the regedit worked well . . . given the time involved on this it makes me wish the WSYP program actually does exist :O http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dF-POFE30E
I’d have gone for the chair smack on this bug.
Thank you all for helping us mere mortals from losing our sanity. All the best.
Hi! Thanks for this it helped alot. But instead of the file you mention caused your problem the same problem happend to me but was caused by a different addin.
The file that casued my problems was named Adobe.Contribute.OfficePlugin
I followed these steps:
A combination of the inputs worked for me -
Part 1 - got my mouse working
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins
Found three add-ins listed. I changed the value of the LoadBehavior key from 3 to 0 for each add-in.
Part 2 - stopped word from crashing on exit
. Close Word and Outlook
2. Start / Run and type regedit
3. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Data
4. Rename this key. (The files in my case that I had to rename was Settings and Toolbars)
5. Restart Word
This worked like a charm!
Thank you so much. I’m in class(University of Miami) and word had this error. It works now.
Just wanted to add Thanks!!! Same problem with word 2007 - was driving me insane. All soretd now after renaming the data key.
THANKS! I had the same issue (mouse not working in documents and Word crashing on closing). The fix was to disable the add-in associated with Adobe Contribute Plugin. Word now appears to work OK.
I just wanted to say thanks as well to those who put the effort to help everyone else suffering with the moodiness of MS Office. Tim’s article helped me start Word (2007 on Vista) normally (it was not opening files except from within word not by double clicking a file, and then text would not be selectable) and Bence’s contributon helped deal with the application crashing upon closing it. So thanks again. You saved me (and many others) loads of work and stress.
Thanks! My problem was Flash Paper. Uninstalled it and I’m a happy camper again. Thank you so much!
Must be something in the air… (or the updates) I ran into this same issue this week. We write addins for Word and have been testing one so I was not surprised when it broke. What surprised me was that I could not fix it. I removed all of the addins and still CRASH. I finally determined that one of the addins had been saved with changes to the Print, Save, and Open commands on the MENU toolbar in word 2003. If I opened Word using the /a switch (without addins or settings), I was ok. I tried Detect & Repair and finally gave up and deleted my [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Data] key. This solved the problem (it was actually the Settings entry that was corrupt) and I was able to put my addins back into startup - once the offending addin was fixed of course!
I tried every suggestion to correct problems with words running in Vista home edition to no avail (manipulated the registry and folders). Word starts in 7 minutes or more and then is unstable. I can’t find normal.dotm anywhere. Word works fine under windows XP so far…
All other Office 2007 components work fine. I think I’ll un-install office 2007 and go back to office 2003 which I didn’t have any problems with it.
Hi, I’m running MS Office 2007 on Vista (32-bit), and whenever I open MS Word, the mouse icon pointer keeps switching between pointer, the typing symbol and the blue circle (that it shows when its busy with something).
any suggestions?
Thanks in advance, p.s. I went through the #24 link steps to see if it would help, but no luck….
Try starting word in safe mode, as described in my original post.
If it works OK, then you know it is some add-on that’s causing the problem.
Tim
Hi Tim,
I tried it in safemode, but I’m still having the same problem. I also uninstalled MS office 07 and reinstalled it, but same problem…
Tim and Bence,
I’m not religious man but bless both of you. JC, after researching this for a week I almost threw my laptop out the window. Thanks to all the posters. My issue was a combination of SnagIt 8 which I’m running with Vista Ultimate, Office 2007, AND the Data key issue. Between the two issues it appears to have resolved all of my issues as well. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. My Dragon Naturally speaking now also works as well as it did before this corruption occured.
Bless your hearts! You saved me from committing suicide. I have a presentation due tomorrow and I was going nuts trying to figure out what happened to my Word. Turns out it was the SnagIt addin.