When using Track Changes in Word, it crashes repeatedly, especially when adding comments

Question

MS Office 2011 (Word) 14.2.5

OSX Mt. Lion 10.8.2

Lately whenever I am revising a document using track changes, and especially when I add comments, Word has been crashing on me consistently. There is no error, it simply crashes and then goes into the bug reporting screen, from which I always 'send' the report to M$.

The documents I'm revising all have mixed English and Tibetan characters, but all of my comments are being added in English.

There seems to be no consistent reason why it crashes (i.e. I can add three/four comments to the doc, but on the fifth one it crashes, or on the 10th, 3rd, etc.) and this has happened with multiple documents that I am revising that were originally created on M$ Word for PC but then re-saved as .docx for Mac on my system. I've noticed that the crashes tend to happen more when I am saving (hitting cmd+S).

After hitting Cmd+S I see a white box with nothing in it that looks like a dialogue box, and when I click on the menu for Word the dropdown list is completely white as well. If I switch to another program and then back to Word, I can see what is in the white box and it reads "A file error has occurred. Check your network connections or make sure the disk is properly inserted and not defective." Sometimes it then just crashes, and sometimes I have to force quit Word.

This has become supremely annoying and is costing me a lot of time in doing my work. Each time the document crashes, I have to re-do whatever was done since the last successful save.

Please let me know why this is happening and what you plan to do to fix it. This is totally unacceptable.

Here is some error information:

Microsoft Error Reporting log version: 2.0

Error Signature:

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS

Date/Time: 2013-01-07 16:32:45 +0000

Application Name: Microsoft Word

Application Bundle ID: com.microsoft.Word

Application Signature: MSWD

Application Version: 14.2.5.121010

Crashed Module Name: libsystem_c.dylib

Crashed Module Version: unknown

Crashed Module Offset: 0x000019f7

Blame Module Name: MicrosoftComponentPlugin

Blame Module Version: 14.2.5.121010

Blame Module Offset: 0x000105f1

Application LCID: 1033

Extra app info: Reg=en Loc=0x0409

Crashed thread: 0

Answer 1

There is a known issue for users who ever installed EndNote. If EndNote was installed, Apple introduced a bug in Mac OS X that causes this crash. You'll have to wait for a fix in Mac OS X from Apple, or completely remove EndNote.

Answer 2

Try accepting what changes you have Then turning off Track Changes.  Then try saving the Document (by using Save As...) as a new document Then see if the document Crashes.

If it does Then do a "Maggie" on the document:

1.  turn on hidden characters the ¶ button.

2.  click at beginning of document.

3.  scroll to end of document

4.  click just before the last ¶.*

5.  now do a copy (⌘-C)

6.  open a new blank document

7.  now do a Paste (⌘-V)

8.  now save document with a slightly different name (example: letter.docx would become letter1.docx

This should correct any corruption.

*  example:

John hit the ball out of the park.¶ ⬅copy to here

¶ ⬅not here.

If you need need track changes turn them back on but get in the habit of accepting changes and saving Frequently.

Answer 3

Phillip,

Thanks for the response. But, I'm afraid this 'fix' sort of misses the point of the problem. I'm not reviewing changes in a document when it crashes, I'm MAKING changes to the document using track changes, so I can't 'accept' the changes, since that defeats the purpose of making them in the first place.

I'll try re-saving the document (although I do this already once I open it and turn on track changes), and see if that still yields crashes, and I have no idea what the 'maggie' 'fix' would do, but that seems ludicrous at best. Crazy as it may be, I'll give it a shot and see if it keeps the program from crashing.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Brad