Word Crashes whenever I open a specific document

Question

_{Thursday, October 22, 2015 12:46 AM}

I have a document that I added styles to yesterday as Chapter headings. When I went to open it today the Chapter headings disappeared. So I closed it and tried to reopen it, at which point Windows "encounters a problem" and closes itself.  

I can open other documents without problems. It's just this critically important one.  I can't open it by itself or from within word I've done a google search for help but its full of technical jargon which I don't understand.

I'm using Word 2013 and Windows 8.1

Thanks in advance.

All replies (3)

_{Thursday, October 22, 2015 1:13 AM ✅Answered}

Hi Rai999,

Most likely you have plug-in installed, which causing word to crash. Could you run Word in safe mode and try opening same document again. “C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft OfficeOffice14Winword.exe” /a
If it opens fine, you need to disable plugins. 

File -> Options -> Add-Ins -> Manage: COM Add-ins -> Go -> untick all plugins -> ok -> restart Word.

Please let me know if it fixes your problem. 

_{Thursday, October 22, 2015 1:30 AM ✅Answered}

Hi Rai,

As you said this issue only appear in a particular file, I suppose this issue might be caused due to this file corruption.

First You can try to open this file in safe mode, please check the add-ins in Word and disable them.

1. Click Start.
2. Click Run.
3. In the run box, type winword /safe.
4. Click OK, or press Enter.
5. Word will open with (Safe Mode) in the title bar.

You can also refer to this article about work with safe mode:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Work-with-Office-safe-modes-dedf944a-5f4b-4afb-a453-528af4f7ac72

Then you may need to repair this corrupted Word file. You can refer to this KB article about how to repair document in Word:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/893672

If you need more help about your issue, I'm glad to help and follow up your reply.

Regards,

Emi Zhang
TechNet Community Support

Please mark the reply as an answer if you find it is helpful.

If you have feedback for TechNet Support, contact [email protected].

_{Thursday, October 22, 2015 1:27 AM}

I have no plugins installed at all.  I don't even know how to install plugins on Word. And no, no one else uses this computer, ever.

I tried running Word in safe mode before posting and I couldn't open the document. Same exact problem.

However, I did have the document saved to One Drive, so I was able to edit in Word online, remove all the styles I added yesterday and that solved one problem, document opened fine, with nothing lost.

But now another problem seems to have appeared. Whenever I go to type in the document, a dashed line bracket appears on the right side (only the right side, not the left) of a given paragraph as I try to type and it doesn't go away even if I type somewhere else.

I thought it might be a bookmark problem, but I checked the advanced tab and bookmarks are not on. I even turned them on and back off to be sure. The box is definitely unchecked but the dashed line bracket doesn't go away.