Word documents won't open

Question

I've been randomly experiencing the issue of opening a Word document and having it flash the blue as though it's opening and then it doesn't. I don't recognize similarities with the files that are doing this. Any ideas as to why this is happening?

Answer 1

Hi H.Anderson,

Thanks for reaching out.

We understand that you are having issues opening one of your Word documents on your computer. This can now be an isolated concern and relate to the particular file considering that you have not seen the same issue in your other files or documents. Let us work together and find ways to sort this out. 

For us to isolate the concern, we would like to know if you have already tried the following methods:

Method 1: Open and Repair the Word document. Could you please verify if you have tried all suggestions discusses in this article: Open a document after a file corruption error to solve this matter?

Method 2: Launch the Word app in safe mode*.* Doing so should help us in determining if this is an add-in-related issue. Please follow the steps under Use the /safe option to open an Office application section through this link on how to do it.

If the issue doesn’t appear while the app is in safe mode, then an add-in is likely causing it. To disable add-ins, please access this article: View, manage, and install add-ins in Office programs and follow the steps under Permanently disable or remove an add-insection. The procedures provided to disable add-in apply to all Office applications.

Method 3: Install Office Update. This process is to ensure that you’ll get access to the newest features and benefit from the latest security updates. Please follow the steps below on how to do this accordingly:

1. Open any Office apps.
2. Click on File.
3. Go to Account.
4. Under Product Information, choose Update Options and click Update Now.
5. Once the updates are completely installed, relaunch the application, and see if the problem occurs.

Method 4: Perform an Online Repair for your Office program. This process can help resolve problems with the features and performance of the Word application. Here are the steps:

1. Right-click the Start button (lower-left corner).
2. Select Apps and Features.
3. Right-click your Microsoft Office suite or Office 365 and click Change, and then choose Online Repair.
4. Click Repair and follow the on-screen instruction to continue. Restart your device and check if the issue will be resolved.

The above methods are part of our isolation so that we can identify which is the root cause of why your Word document won’t open

If all these methods fail to fix this behavior, we can now consider saying that the issue is in the document itself either it's content or how it was created. Therefore, copying the content of this document to a new document is another step we can take to fix this issue. If it is still to no avail, recreating the said document is the last sort to get this resolved.

We hope this info helps. Please don’t hesitate to reach back to us if you need additional assistance.