What to Do When Word Crashes on Windows Machine?
Most of the people are using MS Word for creating a business document, including company reports, presentations, and so on. But, sometimes the file gets crashed when it is opened. Some of the reasons are virus attacks, slow network connection, accidental deletion of the Word document. If you are facing this kind of issue, then here we have explained the complete solution on What to do when Word crashes.
Different Ways to Fix Crashed Word Document When Word Freezes
There are following methods by which users can solve crashing problem whenWord hangs up. Some of them are mentioned below:
For MS Word 2003 & Earlier Versions
- Go to Tools menu and choose Options
- After that, click on the save button
Make sure your Allow fast saves option is unchecked because it is a major source of Word document bloat and corruption. As the bloated Word file will take longer time to save, the function is really useless.
For MS Word 2007 & Later versions
MS Word 2007 have the same options, although in Word 2007 they are accessed by selecting the Office Button and in later versions from the File tab. This dialog box is similar to the illustrations below:
Fast saves have been dropped, but you have to check the following options:
Note: According to above screenshot, there is no “autosave” function in MS Word, however manually saving a document is too complicated, check Automatically backup Word documents. This feature is not only to remind you to save, however, but you can also set it to perform save at a predetermined interval.
For All Versions ( Orphaned Temporary Files)
When you open a Word document, then Word creates a variety of hidden temporary files, in different locations on the hard drive. Open the document and more are created. Now, you can edit a document and there are much more. In the normal events, each file is closed when they will no longer be needed, but when word crashes and is unable to recover, they can be considered left behind, where they can get damage, and in the worst case, prevent you from re-opening document and even from re-starting Word.
Before Restarting MS Word
By default, Windows Explorer is configured to hide system folders and hidden folders. Configure Internet Explorer to display all hidden files and extensions to know the file type. In Windows 7, this option can be accessed from the Internet Explorer menu.
Windows 8/10 Operating System
Windows8 established the ribbon to Windows Explorer and renaming the function as File Explorer. Even though the principles are the same.
Note: You cannot display the protected operating system files from ribbon. You can access the command from Microsoft Windows, go to Start and click Control Panel. Then, choose Appearance and Personalisation, and click on File Explorer Options that will show the dialog box in the previous section.
Temporary Data Files
Using Windows Explorer, first navigate to the Windows temp folder, allocation to be determined by Operating system, but it can also be found by typing %temp%in address bar of Windows Explorer and press Enter key. This shortcut will definitely work with Internet Explorer but not other web browsers.
You can safely remove everything in a folder. Windows does not allow to erase anything actually in use; but if Windows has locked a file, and with Windows 95/98 if someone is still using old systems, first you should reboot to free locked files.
The crash has left a machine in unstable condition, in any situation this is not a bad plan.
Now, you can find the remaining files problem and delete them. MS Word creates a temporary file in different places. On the other hand, those were easy to locate with an old machine, in Windows 7 they are more elusive as a standard search pattern of
“~$*.do*”
cannot locate them, so at the following locations:
- User Templates folder: This folder takes place in Word Options, go to File Locations and select User Templates, which contains the normal template. MS Word will always create a temporary file with a standard template.
- Document template: Word cannot attach to its template folder location as did in previous versions. If you were using a Word document template somewhere other than classified User templates folder when the Word crashes, you can delete the temporary files associated with template in folders.
- Word Startup folder: This folder includes some templates used for add-ins.
- Office Startup folder: If any add-ins available, then use this folder, but it works in a similar way as Word Startup folder. It is situated at C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\STARTUP (where 14 is MS Office version: here Office 2010 and x86 indicates a 64 bit operating system).
Professional Way to Repair Corrupt DOCX File
Sometimes, users cannot recover a damaged .docx file manually from MicrosoftOffice. Thus, they start searching for a reliable third-party tool,i.e., SysTools DOCX Repair Software. It is designed in such a way to retrieve more than one DOCX file at a time. This software helps to fix DOCX corruption issue without losing a single bit of data. The best part of this tool is that there is no need to install MS Office to restore DOCX file.
Final Words
Most of the time, users document may be crashed due to a corruption of the Word file. Therefore, in this write-up, we have discussed what to do when Word crashes in a clear way. Also, we have recommended a trustworthy approach that is mentioned above. It is the best solution, which helps to recover DOCX files with all of its formatting.