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Michael CarsonFlag for United States of America

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Why am I receiving a "Word is experiencing an error trying to open the file" ?

I often receive the below error message when attempting to open Word files.  At the time of the latest occurrence, 67% of 8GB of RAM was in use.  Rebooting the Laptop usually corrects the issue.  I can open a new blank Word file even after the error is received when trying to open an existing Word file.  

Does anyone have any thoughts as to why this is happening?  

I am working on a Lenovo Laptop that has the attached system profile.  The laptop has not been performing as I expected for a quite a while, but I don't know enough to  isolate any issues that are occurring with the software or hardware.

_____________________
Word experienced an error trying to open the file.
Try these suggestions.
* Check the file permissions for the document or drive.
* Make sure there is sufficient free memory and disk space.
* Open the file with the Text Recovery converter
(C:\...\{FILE NAME}[/b]

Thank you
System-Profile.docx
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John
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>>  At the time of the latest occurrence, 67% of 8GB of RAM was in use.  

Quite possibly there is not a large amount of free contiguous RAM available to open the file.  Note the use of the word contiguous.  You might have 2 Gb of RAM available (100 - 67 = 33% = 2 Gb) but it might be in small chunks and not one big chunk (which is what Word is possibly wanting).  When you reboot you clear up all memory problems and thus a large chunk of memory becomes available.

Now you've got 67% of RAM being used.  By what?  What other applications do you have running that are chewing up memory?  A browser?  Or something else.
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Thank you.  I will do that.  This will be the third time I have re-installed Office.  Would that fact lead you to any other conclusion?
Try the Repair Install to see if that helps
Thank you both for you  assistance.  Regarding the RAM usage, please see the attached list of RAM usage.  Does anything look unusual?
2018-12-15_14-47-24.pdf
RAM usage seems normal given all that is running.  Normal total usage in a 64-bit system is 3.5 to 4 GB
Your four big RAM users are Chrome, Snagit, Desktop Window Manager and DropBox.

If you are watching videos or streaming videos while working then that could be where the memory is going to. (Chrome and Snagit).  DropBox seems to have high memory usage, are you sharing files while working, either uploading or downloading?

Snagit also seems to be using a lot of CPU.  25% if I'm reading it correctly.  If you are getting performance problems then closing Snagit may solve those.

Possibly one of those apps is using memory and not releasing correctly.

Try closing Chrome and Snagit and see if that enables you to open your Word files.

Also consider using Process Explorer  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer  to examine your CPU and memory usage.
Thanks and I trust the issue has been resolved
Thank you.  It seems to be solved.