Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of xtinac
xtinac

asked on

Word 97 crashes when printing or copying a doc

I have a 157 page, 8 MB document that I am no longer able to print, as it crashes Word 97 (SR-2).  I tried to copy the contents of the document to a new document with the same results.  This happens regardless if I am on a NT 4.0 SP4 or Win95 machine.  On NT I get a Dr. Watson's error.  If the error details are useful, I have saved a copy.  
These problems started after I had to recover the document after Word crashed (I can't remember the cause of that crash).
I am able to work in the document and save my changes.  I can view the entire document using Print Preview.  My workaround has been to convert the document to Adobe for printing.
The document is a training manual and therefore has many screenshots and PowerPoint slides - hence the size.
Does anyone know if there is a utility for troubleshooting a corrupt Word file?  I've searched the Microsoft KB, without much success for information.
I'd appreciate any feed-back, as I've put a lot of hours into this doc.

Thanks!
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of cri
cri
Flag of Switzerland image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of Anne Troy
Hit your show/hide button (top toolbar--looks like a backwards P). Hit ctrl-home to make sure you're at the top of your document. The hit Shift-Ctrl-End to select your entire document to the end. Then, hold your shift key down, and hit the left and/or up arrows to deselect any extra paragraph markers at the end of the document. If there aren't any, then just deselect the last few words of text. Then copy, then paste. This is how to de-corrupt a document, plain old copy/paste doesn't help. Try this if it's not the way you did it the first time.

Tip for large documents: Given the size of your document, I assume you have graphics in it. Save your file to a new name. You can really reduce the size of your document by clicking on the first graphic, and cutting it with the scissors, then hit Edit-Paste special and select Picture. Do this to the first few graphics and save the file again. Hit File-Properties-General and check out the size. If it's less, you could probably reduce the size a lot. One word of caution: not all graphics will submit to this abuse, but most will. Just make sure you have the originals available, in case you find a couple that don't print out as nice anymore, delete the "picture" formatted one and replace it with a copy of the original graphic from the original file.
As for a utility, there is one commercial, try the demo:
http://www.officerecovery.com/word/index.htm 

xtinac, please paste the error message (w/o hex gibberish, I wonder who can make sense out of this...)

Print the indicated article and work it through w/o hurrying.
Avatar of kurina
kurina

Does the document contain some macros?
If not, or if you do not need to have the macros saved, try to save your document in RTF format.
All the formatting and text information will be kept in the new format, and it is very probable the file will be OK.

Regards
kurina, please don't get me wrong, but the a.m. Microsoft article contains the RTF trick and many more.
Avatar of xtinac

ASKER

OK, I've been steadily working away, trying out the various suggestions.  No success so far.  This is a tough one, I even tried the demo to restore the document, but I can't tell from the results if it will actually fix the document.
So I'm going to try copying it in pieces to a new document to pinpoint where the problem is.

cri, I'm reluctant to paste the whole error log, but the message was:
(in a Dr. Watson's dialog)
An application error has occurred and an application log is being generated.
WINWORD.exe
Exception: access violation (Oxc0000005).....
When's the last time you deleted your temp files? That would be done by closing all programs. Find files named *.tmp,~*.* (exactly as typed, no spaces) and delete them all. Empty the Windows\Temp directory, and restart.
Avatar of xtinac

ASKER

!!! I got it to work !!!  Copied piece by piece and I've just successfully printed it. Now I'm going home - I'm on EST.  YAWN.
Avatar of xtinac

ASKER

Thank you for all the different suggestions.  It really was a case of try try again.