Major issue with Word 2010 on Windows 7 Acer laptop

I'm asking this question on behalf of my Mom.  She has an Acer laptop running Windows 7 (installed on the machine at purchase).  She installed Office 2010 Home Edition (purchased and installed with appropriate licenses).  Word will NOT work properly.  

If she launches the program, it will open and allow her to create a new document.  However, she cannot save it nor can she open an existing document.  She can't open existing documents from Word itself, from Windows Explorer, or from an e-mail attachment.  A document will sometimes open after about 2-5 minutes, but then will completely freeze the computer.  No editing can be done.  The computer is so frozen that even hitting Ctrl+Alt+Del doesn't work and there is no choice but to hold down the power button to turn it off and reboot.  The same thing happens when trying to save a document.

Things we have tried:

She reinstalled office 2010 entirely (which sucked, b/c she wasted a site license doing this).

I ran the registry hot key fix that I found (deleting the Data and Options subkeys)

I forced Word to create a new Normal template

I tried starting in safe mode but I'm not sure it actually worked (it didn't say Safe Mode anywhere)

None of the above made one iota of difference.

She does not have this problem with Excel.  

Please, please, please help- this is just completely unacceptable.

Thank you.

See the KnowledgeBase article "How to troubleshoot problems that occur when you start or use Word" at:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/921541?p=1

Hope this helps,
Doug Robbins - MVP Office Apps & Services (Word)
dougrobbinsmvp@gmail.com
It's time to replace ‘Diversity, Equity & Inclusion’ with ‘Excellence, Opportunity & Civility’ - V Ramaswamy

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She reinstalled office 2010 entirely (which sucked, b/c she wasted a site license doing this).

Reinstalling on the same hardware doesn't affect your licenses - you should be able to do it as often as you need without any effect - when activated, the MS Activation site should recognise that it's the same PC.

Cheers
Paul Edstein
(Fmr MS MVP - Word)

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She reinstalled office 2010 entirely (which sucked, b/c she wasted a site license doing this).

Reinstalling on the same hardware doesn't affect your licenses - you should be able to do it as often as you need without any effect - when activated, the MS Activation site should recognise that it's the same PC.

Okay, thanks, that's good to know.  Unfortunately, it didn't solve the problem.

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The problem could be an add-in that interferes with Word's normal operation. Follow the steps to manually troubleshoot COM and Startup add-ins in the Knowledge Base article at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/921541/en-us.

Stefan Blom
MS 365 Word MVP since 2005
Volunteer Moderator
MS 365, Win 11 Pro
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Note that I do not work for Microsoft
https://mvp.microsoft.com/
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Please specify Word version & OS in your question

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Last updated October 5, 2021 Views 1,128 Applies to: