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Microsoft Word has stopped working on Windows computer

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When I started getting this error Microsoft Word has stopped working, A problem caused the program to stop working correctly, Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available, on my Office installation, I was a little irritated. I just could not open any Word documents. Well, in case you face the same issue, you can try this.

Microsoft Word has encountered a problem and needs to close

When you try to open any Word document, you get may these error dialog boxes and error messages.

Microsoft Word has stopped working

Microsoft Word has stopped working

In such cases, you can try the following troubleshooting steps.

Ofice Add-ins are a very common cause of why you could get such errors. What we need to do is disable the trouble-making add-in.

Run winword.exe /a. This will prevent Word from loading its add-ins. When asked if you want to open Word in Safe Mode, click on Yes.

This will open Word in Safe Mode. Now click on the File tab and select Options.

In the Word Options, select Add-Ins.

Browse the active Add-ins for ones you think may be causing Word to crash. In my case, it was the Send to Bluetooth add-in which caused Word on my Windows 7 to crash. Click on Go to manage this add-in. Uncheck the trouble-making add-in and click OK.

Close Word.

Now try to open any Word document. It should work!

Once done, you may want to check which of the installed Word plugins or addons could be causing this issue and disable or uninstall it.

If it doesn’t help you can try to reset Office Registry settings to default values.

If it still doesn’t help the best option would be to Repair Office. This post on how to repair Office or uninstall individual Office programs will show you how to do it.

See this post if PowerPoint is not responding or if you generally receive a Program not responding message.

Mac user? See Microsoft Word has encountered a problem and needs to close on Mac.

Why has my Microsoft Word stopped working?

Microsoft Word may stop working due to excessive memory usage, especially with large documents or numerous open files. To resolve this, close unneeded programs to free up memory and check for conflicts with add-ins or extensions. Restarting Word or your computer can also help in addressing the issue.

How do I get my Microsoft Word back to normal?

To return Microsoft Word to its normal layout, click the ‘View’ tab at the top of the window. In the ‘Document Views’ section, select ‘Print Layout’. This action will restore your document to its standard appearance, making it easier to edit and format.

AnandK@TWC

Anand Khanse is the Admin of TheWindowsClub.com, a 10-year Microsoft MVP (2006-16) & a Windows Insider MVP (2016-2022). Please read the entire post & the comments first, create a System Restore Point before making any changes to your system & be careful about any 3rd-party offers while installing freeware.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  5. Martin Seccombe says

    This article is a real practical help. Many thanks. It seems that this is a common problem and this article needs to be readily available to help others who are frustrated as I have been….!

  8. mahesh pujari says

    Great Tip, it worked for me.
    I had tried from reinstallations to latest path updates, nothing worked.
    Thanks a lot.
    Regards,
    Mahesh.

  10. Anonymous says

    Having had problems with Outlook 2010 then Word 2010 crashing the next day I thought I was never going to get my new laptop built and up and running. Thanks guys brilliant easy directions and bang on the button- excellent.

  20. Eliza says

    Many many thanks for clear and easy to follow instructions that provide a solution to an extremely frustrating problem.

  21. Adryannegorden says

    i dont have this problem. When I start word it start and after like 3 seconds it says WINWORD.EXE has stopped working an it just closes. and yes this is the 2010. version any help?

  22. Tm says

    Thank YOU SO FREAKING MUCH!!!!

    I REALLY Appreciate it dude i’ve surfed everywhere and couldnt find a solution

  23. Majdi O says

    Finally!
    Been suffering from this issue for a while, disabling the same Add-in fixed the problem.

    Thanks much :)

  24. Jim_titmuss says

    Simple to follow instructions that fixed my problem.
    Now to get ms to fix blue-tooth add-in

  26. Guest says

    THANK U !!! what an anooying problem finally fixed. What a dum idea Microsoft did, to add addons to word!

  31. Robert Denk says

    I tried this fix and it skipped through safe mode but fixed the issue Thank You Robert Denkewalter Rob @ Hrpayroll,com and again this is a sincere Thank You

  32. Yeebhaam1990 says

    Glad that i found this solution…i was afraid i had uninstall the software and go through other sorts of problem but luckily i found your post and it fixed it.
    Thank you so much!!!

  40. Happy Word-ster ! says

    Worked for me … unlike anything else I tried … like all the “official” microsoft solutions … or even repair … or reinstall … but turning off bluetooth did the trick … has plagued me for six months … had to use a lot of rtf as a workaround … but now I can use Word once again!!!

  41. Wlc says

    I had excatly the same problem but didn’t have “send to Bluetooth” among my various add-ins.
    Working from the bottom of the list up, I disabled the first “Zeon Word Add-in” whatever that is, or does, and now MS Word starts first time.
    Many thanks for your advice.
    Regards
    Bill

  43. Aussie_sunshine says

    when i type in winword.exe to my start search it comes up with nothing. . what should i do?

  45. canadamac says

    Thank you so much, this was annoying me to no end. I haven’t had any problems with it but Word was taking soooo long to load that add-in, I am glad to be rid of it!

  46. Tyler Zeck says

    Thank you thank you thank you. I’ve been struggling with this problem for hours. I’m glad someone had it figured out!

  49. Tiagu Chilappan says

    when i type winword.exe /a in my Windows 7 start search and hit Enter, the microsoft office word open by itself…i didt see the safe mode dialog box appear…

  52. noeliano says

    great help , u r the best and life saver . the best help I got ever thank you so much and god bless you :)

  53. Dirish says

    You are a life saver!!!! I was ready to smash my new laptop and knew it was a conflict. Thank you for posting this fix!!!

  54. Ina says

    It helped me too! So simple and caused me so much trouble for months…Microsoft should remove this stupid send to bluetooth add on – it shouldn’t be there at all!

  61. Ny7254 says

    I am getting the “Microsoft Office Word Has Stopped Working” message. I tried the steps above to correct the problem. However, in Add Ins, the active application I show is – Person Name (Outlook Email Recipients) Under Location is – C:…esmicrosoft sharedSmart TagFNAME.DLL and under Type is – Smart Tag.

    When I click manage add ins, the above file is not there. There is nothing showing to uncheck.

    I hope someone gets back to me. This is driving up a wall. My email is – ny7254@gmail.com
    Thank you.

  66. itswoots says

    I am running Windows 7 with Office 2000. I get a “stopped working” message whenever I get out of a document and only when I get out. Otherwise WORD works fine. I tried your solution above but the safe mode doe not appear. How do I get rid of this annoying warning?

  67. mattapo says

    Thank you! – This was driving me mad! – You explained how to fix it perfectly. Cheers

  72. vanster123 says

    Guys — I have been having this problem for over 1 year… new Dell XPS
    15 laptop… WIndows 7…. I finally figured it out, and have to share
    it with you guys:

    1) Word crashes ALL the time– about 80 – 90%, when opening / closing documents, and when opening / closing Word.
    “Word has stopped working…”

    2)
    The COPY command copies a black blob oval when you try to PASTE. I
    installed CLIPX to see what was in the clipboard, and it showed the
    black blob oval AND a Bluetooth symbol

    What was the problem?

    Intel Bluetooth drivers

    I installed the Intel Bluetooth drivers using:

    1) Control Panel – Device Manager
    AND
    2) Control Panel > Programs & Features > Uninstall
    AND
    3) REGEDIT > HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > software > microsoft > office > word > addins
    and got rid of the btmoffice.connect stuff….

    SO FAR NO MORE CRASHES and NO MORE COPYING strange characters!!!

  74. Bert Leen says

    Many of reason responsible for Microsoft window corruption don’t worry you have try any windows data recovery software like Kernel for windows data recovery software to repair and recover corrupted windows partitions and resolve log, booting error as well. For more details visit here : http://www.kerneldatarecovery.com/word-recovery.html

  80. Mark S says

    As a note–I had a problem with Word 2003 corrupting the clipboard when it opened. Diabling the Bluetooth add-in fixed it for me too.

  81. Deep End Fishing says

    Have had the annoying ‘Windows has stopped working” messages ever since I downloaded it. It is so frustrating as it happens every time I try & use Word. Just tried you’re amazing tip “winword.exe /a” THANK YOU!

  85. Girish says

    Thanks HappyAndy, turned out to be an Happy Ending to me as MS Word 2010 now works great with this fix, not sure how you identified this to be a “send to Bluetooth” is the troublemaker!
    Thanks
    Girish

  87. Angry says

    I’ve disabled all add-ins; I didn’t have a bluetooth add-in. The only way MS Word Professional 2013 stays open without error or crashing is in safe mode, and launching with winword.exe /a.

    When it was launched with winword.exe /a everything was fine. But, I don’t want to have to open Word like this every time I use it.

    Is anyone aware of any other solutions??? (This is why I prefer WordPerfect over Word. Word SUCKS!!!

  90. Brian M. says

    My “at fault” was ABBYY fine reader 9.0. As they say in the movies|: “You sir are a steely-eyed missile man!” My undying gratitude!!

  92. Rosie says

    This has been so helpful! I have literally been going spare for weeks with all the trouble using the Word Online application has caused. Thanks so much!

  98. John Park says

    I would like to suggest the user, do not put the R & D on your data. Kernel Recovery for Word tool which available in a demo version, you can repair your data and also see the preview of
    recover data in demo version.

  109. Gil Gerretsen says

    I was having the same problem with my Word 2010 crashing on Windows 8.1
    and was frustrated by all the tips and suggestions that did not work. By
    sheer luck, I stumbled on the answer. The problem stems from the Word
    save settings set to backup to One Drive by default. The minute I
    changed that (File, Options, Save) to a directory on my hard drive, the
    problem ended.

  112. Jayne says

    The ‘Send to Bluetooth’ add-in was the culprit for me too! Thanks for the tip, I’ve been putting up with this annoyance for ages and getting increasingly frustrated with my laptop, so thanks very much…and sorry laptop… :-D !!

  113. Debra Lamb says

    Wonderful, thank you for sharing.
    Do you have any suggestions for excel – same problem but no add-ins were active

  115. Richard Washington says

    I have done all the said fixes/solutions and still receive this error, this error appears when our user tries to do an copy and paste to excel, and when downloading from G-mail (docs) the error appears also.

  117. Frank Asseko says

    thank you so much. it worked for me. i was looking so desperate. i am so grateful to internet and its network.

  119. Rick Petford says

    Thanks so much – I couldn’t see how to start Word up in Safe Mode, but followed the rest of the instructions and it worked like a charm!

  120. joe says

    my 2007 word document does not work properly, when I go to update a document it jams and does not work, i will have to end task

  121. Yi Hiini says

    hello everyone,
    i currently have a word undo disable problem. i mean my word 2013 undo function doesn’t work. i have tried to find a solution from google. but seems none works. can anyone help please. much appreciated.

  126. Julie says

    Great Big Thankyou Anand. Once the “Send To Bluetooth” file was removed I was immediately able to start using WORD 2016 after updating from WORD 2017. Tried numerous repairs and re-installs over the last few days, tearing my hair out why it wasn’t was working. Happy days now !

  127. unknown says

    This Doesn’t work i get the same problem when i open up on safe mode and i repaired it Can anyone help?

  129. Raghu says

    In Start Search, type Run. The Run box will open. Type winword.exe /a in it and hit Enter.

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