Error when printing from Windows Explorer

Question

I just got a

"Run-time error '509':
The SetDocumentDirty command is not available because the document is locked for editing" when I went to print an extra copy of my resume from Windows Explorer.

I'm using Windows 10 with Word 2007. I'm job searching with no income so please no suggestions that I rent Office 360 if it costs me money just because it's the "latest and greatest". With Word 2007 I don't have to keep paying even if I'd rather install Word 2003 or 2000 on win10 and Word 97 would suffice for what I need at the moment.

My resume is stored on a share of my old XP computer, and I opened the share, right-clicked on the file and hit "Print". The document seemed to have printed correctly, but I'm wondering why this popped up all of a sudden:

Should I be worried? I got what I wanted for tomorrow's job interview. Clicking on "Help" just brought me to the "Word 2007 Developer Reference" table of contents.

Anyways, it left me with the resume open in Word instead of exiting like it normally does. I just X-ed out, grabbed my resume off the printer and stuffed it in the portfolio for tomorrow, then went to ask this question.

Answer 1

There is a possibility that in Word, the option under Options>Display to "Update fields before printing" is turned off, with the effect that when printing the document from Word, any fields in it are not updated, so the file is not "Dirty" while if the printing is done directly from the File Explorer, an attempt is made to update the fields, but because the document is locked for editing. that cannot be done.

Answer 2

The Normal template is always a *.dotm; it has to be, because otherwise Normal can't contain macros.

What is "Resume40" in your list of projects (documents and templates) in the Project Explorer? I am guessing it is a template which may very well be macro-enabled. You have to investigate it to rule it out, at least.

I am repeating part of your screen shot below, for clarity:

Did you try starting Word in application Safe mode? Exit Word. Restart the program as you hold the Ctrl key and click yes when asked about Safe mode.

Answer 3

VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) is the macro language included with Office.

Macro errors such as the one shown in your screen shot usually means that broken code is present in an add-in or in the Normal template. As part of troubleshooting, try starting Word in application Safe mode (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/open-office-apps-in-safe-mode-on-a-windows-pc-dedf944a-5f4b-4afb-a453-528af4f7ac72) and see if that temporarily suppresses the error message.

If Safe mode does work around the issue, do the following: (1) Rename the Normal template. If that fixes the problem, you are done. (2) If not, continue troubleshooting add-ins, as discussed in the article at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/word/issues-when-start-or-use-word.

Answer 4

I would suggest that you use File>Open in Word to open the document in Word, and then use the Print facility in Word to print it.

Answer 5

Why was it even mentioning something about Visual basic? The document should not have any VBScript or macros in it at all. In fact, I thought macros were turned off by default starting with Word 2000 after the disaster of macro viruses in Word 97 and I never turned them on.

Also I never installed Visual BASIC on my win10 computer at all.