Blog: MS Word

Recently, I was working on two similar issues with two different laptops. Both users reported problems with opening word documents. When I started troubleshooting the first laptop, I opened Word and then proceeded to wait for around 15-20 seconds for the application to start and another 15 seconds for a new document to be created. When I closed Word, I got a prompt telling me that there were changes to the normal.dotm template and asked if I wanted to save them. Sure, why not? Re-opened word and the problem still existed. When I received the same error message on closing Word, I decided to go check out the templates folder where normal.dotm is stored. In both the Templates folder and the STARTUP folder (for Microsoft Word), there was a template file that was stuck open with a tmp file present. I removed both tmp file instances and successfully started Word. Problem solved!

The second laptop was slightly different. Word would start immediately, but when double-clicking on a document, it would fail to load. No error message; it just wouldn’t load. Looked in the templates directory and didn’t see the same symptoms. After more troubleshooting, I began disabling add-ins for Word. Turns out, the “Send via Bluetooth” add-in was causing these problems. I disabled the add-in and all was good in the world.

Within Microsoft Word, there is a feature to split a document screen into two sections so you can view two parts of a document at the same time.  To split the screen, double click on the small rectangular box located above the vertical scroll bar (see figure 1).  You can resize the panes by holding down the left mouse button (when the mouse is hovered over the split box), and dragging the split box up or down (see figure 2).  To remove the split screen, simply double click on the split box. [more]

Figure 1

Figure 2

A local computer consulting client started getting this error every time she tried to close Word or Excel:

The instruction at “0x01003ce4” referenced memory at “0x00000018”.  The memory could not be “read”.  Click on OK to terminate.  Click Cancel to debug the program.

I did a quick search and only saw errors about Office Live Sign in and thought that couldn't be it.  I went on site to remove and reinstall Office.  I first reproduced the error and saw that the message box had "OfficeLiveSignIn.exe - Application Error." in the heading.  The user was using the Office Live messenger instant messaging client.  It had installed an addon to Word and Excel.  Disabling this addon fixed the problem.

In a security advisory, Microsoft states it is investigating reports of targeted attacks using a vulnerability in the Microsoft Jet Database Engine that can be exploited through Microsoft Word.

According to the advisory, customers running Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2, Windows Vista, and Windows Vista Service Pack 1 are not vulnerable to the buffer overrun being attacked, as they include a version of the Microsoft Jet Database Engine that is not vulnerable to this issue.  However, customers using Microsoft Word 2000 Service Pack 3, Microsoft Word 2002 Service Pack 3, Microsoft Word 2003 Service Pack 2, Microsoft Word 2003 Service Pack 3, Microsoft Word 2007, and Microsoft Word 2007 Service Pack 1 on Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 are vulnerable to these attacks.

To read more visit
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,143749-pg,1/article.html

For the original Microsoft advisory visit
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/950627.mspx

In Microsoft Office 2007, you can adjust the size of the menu "ribbon" (term used by Microsoft) at the top of Word, Excel, etc. by changing the font size of the "Menu" item under your Display properties.  Reducing the font size reduces not only the size of the font, but the size of the ribbon icons as well which give you more real estate when working in Office 2007 apps.  To get there, right-click on your Desktop -> Properties -> Appearance tab -> Advanced button -> choose "Menu" in the "Item" pull-down box -> change the "Size" pull-down box next to the Font name.  Note that since you are changing the general Display properties, the change will affect menus other than just Office.  [more]

For example:

A font size of 8 ...

Looks like this in Word:

 And a font size of 14 ...

Looks like this in Word (notice that for reference purposes the "This is a test" is the same font and size in both screen shots):

Not everyone agrees that there should be two spaces between sentences.  That being the case, not everyone puts two spaces between the sentences, making it a very time consuming task for those of us prefer two spaces.  In Word 2007, there is an option to have this marked as a grammatical error; therefore, making it very easy to identify and fix in documents.  This feature is located in Word Options, which is found when you click on the Microsoft icon.  Then select proofing.  About 2/3 the way down the page is a drop down box for Writing Style.  If you select “Grammar & Style”, and then click on Settings, you’ll have an option to select how many spaces are required between sentences.  Any more or any less will show as a grammatical error.

Writing scripts in Visual Basis for Applications (VBA) is convenient for automating tasks within Word, Excel, etc.  However, if you then want to be able to run any of those scripts as VBScript there are functions of VBA that are not supported in VBScript that you will have to modify before the script will compile.  A list of VBA functions that are not supported in VBScript can be found here.  The Control Flow functions (e.g. GoTo command) got me recently.