Word crashes with "A COM exception has occurred."

It’s a setting in Preferences that you need turn off I  don't use Lion yet, But from what I've read its in the general Preferences.  Think its named Restore or resume.

This doesn't help while you are caught in the error message loop because you can't access Preferences. What cured the problem was what DrC wrote:

THis is what I just did and it worked...don't know how I figured it out...  I have a brand new Macbook Pro but migrated the old software...Microsoft Office.  Could not get word to work...kept getting the "COM1 Exception Has Occurred" in an "Endnote X1" window.

Go into applications =>Microsoft Office=>Office=>Startup=>Word

In that folder I found a file titled Endnote something or other...  I deleted that file, rebooted, and it worked...  Or at least it is working so far...

This happens when you have EndNote installed and are launching Word by opening a document that is protected. This is a known bug with EndNote X5 (I know because I reported this issue during X5 beta testing). The only workaround is not to leave a protected file open when quitting Word, or not to launch Word by opening a protected file.

If Word crashes with the protected file open it gets stuck in an endless loop of crashing with the COM error immediately on restart. Which is bad. I'm dealing with this right now, actually.

THis is what I just did and it worked...don't know how I figured it out...  I have a brand new Macbook Pro but migrated the old software...Microsoft Office.  Could not get word to work...kept getting the "COM1 Exception Has Occurred" in an "Endnote X1" window.

Go into applications =>Microsoft Office=>Office=>Startup=>Word

In that folder I found a file titled Endnote something or other...  I deleted that file, rebooted, and it worked...  Or at least it is working so far...

drC

Late to the game here, but this was closest to the mark and helped me. The file that I found was:

EndNote CWYW Word 2011.bundle

And it was located:

/Applications/Microsoft Office 2011/Office/Startup/

I was getting the EndNote error/pop-up as well when opening protected word documents. Oddly, I had removed EndNote several months ago, and this little gem remained. Once I trashed it, all went smoothly.

System: Mac 10.7.5 (with Office 2011, obvious due to the file path)

I wasn't about the instructions listed in the suggestion above.  I ended up uninstalling Endnote X4 from my computer and deleting the folder, and that worked just fine.  I found those instructions in the Endnote help menu.