HELP - Whenever I open a Word Document (Office for Mac 2011) it thrashes endlessly, 9 times out of ten. I have to force quit WORD to make it stop thrashing. I cannot edit or print when thrashing. I'm using OSX 10.10, but this always happened with OS9 and earlier versions.

1. Office For Mac

It also happens sometimes in Excel. I have given up talking to Microsoft who says it is an Apple issue, after waiting hours to talk to a live person. When I talk to Apple, they say it's a Microsoft issue!

Appreciate any help or sources where I might get help to resolve this problem. This is going to be difficult if impossible to answer. Lets take Word for example:. Document can be corrupted.

Duplicate or Defective Fonts. Too much use of Track Changes without accepting changes and resaving frequently. In OS X even a defective Launch Services Database which can be repaired or replaced by some utilities, can have some effect on this. The Two most common items which even affected OS 9 is. Document Corruption.

Duplicate or Defective Fonts. In OS 9, tracking down Font issues was almost impossible to track down, because there was no Font Book for OS9. It was such an impossible task you would check out fonts on your own and depending upon how many you might take 6 months to a year if you were persistent.

Most people just lived with it. In OS X, You open Font Book, select all fonts at one time and choose validate fonts which locate duplicates and defective fonts. Go to this Website and check page on Font Book and Lion and newer. There are several ways to get around Document corruption but the one has worked since the days Of OS 9 is called 'Doing a Maggie' (after Margaret Scalra (?) ) who first tried the procedure.

Here is a Description: To do a 'Maggie' on the document: (Scorched Earth Version — you have to completely reformat document.). turn on hidden characters with the ¶ button. click at beginning of document.

scroll to end of document. click just before the last ¶ mark. now do a copy ⌘-C.

open a new blank document. now do a Paste Special (From edit Menu choose Pastes Special plain text). now save document with a slightly different name. (example: letter.docx would become letter1.docx) This should correct any corruption. example: John hit the ball out of the park.¶ ¶ John hit the ball out of the park.¶ ⬅ copy to here ¶ ⬅ not here ——————— There is an alternate, less destructive method I've been told about recently. You can keep your formatting if you change step 7 from Paste Special, to Paste (⌘-V). Try ⌘-V (paste) first.

If doesn't fix, then follow original steps using Paste Special. (edited: 6/8/2015) I hope this helps with your current issue. Disclaimer: The questions, discussions, opinions, replies & answers I create, are solely mine and mine alone, and do not reflect upon my position as a Community Moderator.

If my reply has helped, mark accordingly - Helpful or Answer Phillip M. Jones, C.E.T. Technically, thrashing is when your system runs out of virtual memory and has to constantly access the hard disk to exchange data. Usually, you'll hear the hard disk arm in constant motion and if you can see a drive light, it will remain on almost constantly. If this describes your experience, your system most likely needs additional free hard disk space. In addition, installation of extra RAM is extremely helpful. If you have an external drive or can burn some DVDs, try to create some extra room on your disk.

At this time, a defrag may help, but you have to do with the Mac started from an external disk. Once you get your system in order, Word will behave. Brandwares - Advanced Office template services to the graphic design industry and select corporations. John Korchok, Production Manager production@brandwares.com. Hi Gary: You have been caught up in what the computer industry calls 'Finger Pointing': each side blaming the other. The problem is 'there is something wrong with the document'. OK, this may be both obvious and unhelpful, but that's where we are at.

Note: I am assuming that your experience is in fact a 'Hang' (coloured spinning beachball) and not what John correctly describes as 'thrashing'. If you are in fact thrashing, then the only cure is to add memory and disk space. Now, we need quite a bit more information before we can suggest how to recover: when asking for help in a public forum, it speeds things up a lot if you give us the version numbers of both Word and your Operating System.

However, in this case I would deal with both issues by advising you to make sure you have the latest updates for both: 1) Go here and update your OS. 2) Go to the Help menu in any Microsoft application and run 'Check for updates'. Always update the OS before the applications, that's critical because the application updater checks for the update level of the OS and installs the appropriate updates accordingly.

After updating both, re-start the computer. That enables OS X to clean everything up. Just doing those three things may solve your problem. Now: When I say there is something wrong with the document, that simply means that the document is causing Word to exceed its performance limits. There are things a user can do in a document that Word cannot handle.

As Phillip says: not removing tracked changes from the document will eventually and inevitably get the document into a state where Word cannot continue to work with it. When the document gets into that state, the only thing you can do is remove the tracked changes. To do so: a) Go to the Review tab b) Click the disclosure triangle beside the 'Accept' button. C) Choose 'Accept all changes in document'. D) Save the document e) Quit Word.

It's essential to save and then quit, because that triggers the internal document clean-up. When you re-open Word, the problem should be gone. If it is not, then we need to Maggie the document. Phillip's version of the Maggie is far too destructive for most purposes: you would lose all of the formatting, pictures, tables, cross-references, etc. Basically: you lose the document. Phillip should know better than to post that version.

Try this version: 1. Create a new blank document in.docx format 2. Carefully select all of the text in the bad document EXCEPT the last paragraph mark 3. Paste in the new document. Save under a new file name and close all, then re-open. By now your problem should have gone.

If it hasn't, you need to keep working down the chain. The next item is to rectify the fonts installed on that machine. A) If you have fonts installed but disabled, enable them all while you do this. B) Now do this: Note the necessity to re-start the computer after doing that, again, to cause OS X to re-set its internal stores, which Word uses. If this has not solved the problem, please post back here. Please provide all the version details, and note what happened when you did each of the procedures above. Because we can't read your screen from here, we need exact details, especially the text of any messages that may appear.

That text needs to be complete, including any numbers. Many error messages have the same text: it's the number that tells us what the problem is.Hope this helps John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer. The reason I posted the Original version was because that was the one I learned and wasn't aware (never been told) that you could simply Copy and would get rid of the defects. I will post an edited Version giving the option. To do either way if one doesn't work try the other. Thanks John for the update.

Disclaimer: The questions, discussions, opinions, replies & answers I create, are solely mine and mine alone, and do not reflect upon my position as a Community Moderator. If my reply has helped, mark accordingly - Helpful or Answer Phillip M.

Jones, C.E.T. Wow - I truly do appreciate your help! This issue has been happening for almost 1-1/2 years, when I bought my new iMac and installed Microsoft Office I'm thinking I do need to clarify a few things and answer questions about OS and updates: I'm doubting that document corruption is the issue since ALL of my WORD documents that I open have this problem. A few times in the past, when I restarted my iMac, the problem subsided, but quickly returned after making changes to a document.

When I try and open WORD from the dock, it thrashes and won't open for about 2 minutes. The only time I have a chance at opening a document right away is when I chose a document select 'open with'.

Then when I try and do something with it (print or edit), it thrashes. The only way to stop the thrashing is by going to the dock and selecting 'force quit' twice (top of the dock menu says'application not responding'). Then a message appears that asks if I want to report the problem to Microsoft, which I do, but likely goes into black hole. On rare occasions, no problem is evident. For some reason, when I use the 'open with' command when selecting a WORD document, two versions of WORD appear in the choices along with Windows versions (which I also have).

When I select the other Mac version, another WORD icon appears in the dock, v 14.3.9. There is only one version in my applications folder 14.5.0. OSX 10.10.3 is up to date. Microsoft WORD for Mac 2011: V 14.5.0 (150423) is up to date iMac info: Model Name: iMac (late 2013 model, purchased Jan 2014) Model Identifier: iMac14,2 Processor Name: Intel Core i7 Processor Speed: 3.5 GHz Number of Processors: 1 Total Number of Cores: 4 L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB L3 Cache: 8 MB Memory: 16 GB Boot ROM Version: IM142.0118.B09. Version (system): 2.15f7 Hardware UUID: C958EC1A-A8FC-5644-B7C3-24635C055B10. in the Dock Locate the Word icon which opens the 14.3.9 Version. Or Go to Finder File Menu Find File and Type Microsoft Word.

If you find two versions check and see what versions they are. The only version of Word you should have is located in Office2011 Folder inside The application Directory. If there is a second copy anywhere else check its version if it is version 14.3.9 That version should be moved to trash. Shut down Computer and Restart. Now locate the version in the MicroSoft Office 2011 Folder (Make sure it the most current version). Click to open. Should open faster.

Office For Mac

Disclaimer: The questions, discussions, opinions, replies & answers I create, are solely mine and mine alone, and do not reflect upon my position as a Community Moderator. If my reply has helped, mark accordingly - Helpful or Answer Phillip M. Jones, C.E.T. Hi Gary: OK, if it is ALL (or nearly all.) documents, then the problem is not what we first thought. We need to perform more diagnostic testing to discover what the problem really is. The first thing I would do is to find and re-name all versions of the Normal template.

There may be several: One in /Users//Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates (for Office 2011, that's the 'real' one that should be in use) and maybe one in /Users//Documents/Microsoft User Data and one in /Users//Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User Content/Templates But be aware that a Normal template can be 'anywhere' you choose to put it, and asking Word for it is not helpful in this case, because Word will tell you about only the one it is currently using, not any others it might find and copy if the first one goes away. It's those old copies you need to get rid of. So you need to use Spotlight to search for 'Normal.dotm'. You will need to search twice, once in your 'Library' folder and once in your 'Documents' folder, because by default Spotlight won't search the Library (won't even show it to you.). Quit Word (MUST be quit, not minimised) then re-name each one you find to something such as 'old Normal'. If you don't quit Word before doing this, it will simply overwrite Normal with the one it always stores in memory while it is running. Now re-start Word.

It will create a new, blank default Normal when it restarts (PROVIDED you found and fixed ALL the old ones). If there's a file left on your computer named 'Normal.dotm', chances are Word will find it, copy it, and you will get your problem back. See if that has fixed your problem.

If it hasn't, the next step is to blow away Word's System Preferences. Perform Method 1 as described in the following article: Actually, for your purposes, that article is out of sequence.

I would perform Method 3, then 2, then 1, then 4:-) Test between each try. If it is STILL not fixed, continue with Method 5 (but omit the bottom points 3 and 4 from Step 2, otherwise you will have to re-activate.) Hope this helps John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer. Hi Phillip: You need to decide what you want to do, then think carefully about the effect of the technique you recommend. You mixed together two techniques, which will make your user seriously unhappy if they do both together:-) 1) If the problem is a bad Section Break, then an ordinary Paste (carefully not selecting the last paragraph mark) will preserve all content while discarding the final section break and its corrupt formatting. 2) If your problem is corrupt content, then you need to Paste as Unformatted Text, which discards all formatting, pictures, tables, the lot.

Usually you would perform some testing and try to paste only the affected part of the document as plain text. Otherwise, you blow away the user's document. Users who format with styles can reapply the formatting in a few minutes, with a few clicks, but we need to remember that most users refuse to learn styles so reapplying the formatting may take them hours or days. In this case, no harm was done, because given Gary's extra information, the problem is with multiple documents, so it's probably the template or the preferences, and neither kind of Maggie is going to fix it. As my old News Editor once told us: 'I don't want to be first to publish, I want to be first to be RIGHT!' Cheers John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer. I was going by information given First it was talked about stuff going on for years even back to OS9 days.

That would make it Word 6 Excel 5 days (94/95?), Office X was first ever version to work OSX. The later on mention of showing two different versions of office 14.3.9 and 4.5.1. So I had to switch gears.

When I learned the method of Doing the Maggie the only way to do was the First Method which we now call scorched earth version. I don't have to do it often, but still method I still use. Now next time it happens I will try this new version that I just found out about, and see what happens. I've edited my answer to account for both methods. Fortunately I haven't had to write 500 page manuals. Although when I was an officer in Electronics Association I did write 50 page reports sometimes and I re-wrote Bylaws and Working Rules which was about 100 pages. Then when I go finished with the 'Maggie' it was mentioned that they received an error message showing two distinct versions of Office (14.5.1 and 14.3.9) at the same time which indicates either two copies of Office being installed or at some point an update went wrong.

In which case, a complete removal and install is order. You have to switch gears according to what you are given. Thank you for letting me know about the new method. All I can do is my best.

Disclaimer: The questions, discussions, opinions, replies & answers I create, are solely mine and mine alone, and do not reflect upon my position as a Community Moderator. If my reply has helped, mark accordingly - Helpful or Answer Phillip M. Jones, C.E.T.