Can't open multiple Word documents

Question

I have a user who occasionally can't open a Word document if he already has one open:

• If he has a Word document open and tries to open another existing document, he will get a second Word window, but it will be blank. Not a blank document, but just a blank instance of Word. 
• This is very inconsistent. It doesn't happen all the time, and doesn't even happen consistently with the same documents. Sometimes a document will open fine if something else is open, sometimes it won't. 
• It's also inconsistent in terms of where the documents come from. He's had it happen while opening documents from the shared drive, from an email, or even from the internet. 
• If this happens to him (and again, this happens only occasionally and inconsistently), he can close out of Word completely and try again and it almost always works the next time. 

As you can see, it's a tough one because it can't be replicated and it's somewhat vague. If anyone has any troubleshooting tips, please pass them along. 

Thank you, 

Leah

Answer 1

Hi,

Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Office Community.

Let us refer to the steps mentioned in the following article and check if it helps.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/921541

Hope it helps. Reply with the result and I'll be happy to help you further.

Thank you.

Answer 2

I was able to finally get the KB article to open and the fix it tool seems to have solved this issue for me.

Answer 3

I'm having this same issue in Office 2013 in Word and Excel and the KB article link isn't working for me, I'm getting a 503 error.