Word won't save files -URGENT -IMPORTANT

I tried selecting ALL in one of these docs that won't save, pasting contents into a new doc, and saving that with a new name and place. It saves the file name but with 0 KB. 

All I've been able to do successfully is copy the contents of each file into a new Google doc file. But then I lose all formatting, all revision info. It's pretty bad. Hope someone can help!

A Send to Bluetooth add-in is a common cause of this problem.

A lot of problems with Office 2013 are caused by third party (non-Microsoft) applications.  This is my (expanding) list of things to try when Office 2013\365 won’t start or crashes:

See the Article “Why can’t I start my Office 2013 application at:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/support/why-cant-i-start-my-office-2013-application-HA104011864.aspx

For the error message Error: "Microsoft Office cannot verify the license for this product." See:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2797062/en-us

Refer to the following website for information on repairing Office 2013\365:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project-help/repair-or-remove-office-2010-HA010357402.aspx

See Office 2013 install woes - http://office-watch.com/t/n.aspx?a=1834

See the KnowledgeBase article “Office 2013 applications crash on launch at the splash screen” at:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2813143

Or see the KnowledgeBase article Error: “Something went wrong and we can't sign you in right now” when trying to install Office 2013 at:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2811180/en-us/

Try to run word in safe mode by typing winword/safe.

If thatdoes not helpthen, in the search box type winword --> Word 2013 will be displayed --> right click on it --> Select Properties --> Go to the compatibility tab --> Check to see if there is a check mark next to compatibilty mode.

If it is checked then uncheck it and then uncheck the option of Run as Administrator if its checked.

Now run the word

Also see my response in

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2013_release-word/microsoft-word-2013-has-stopped-working/67b81016-849f-481a-bce5-bf04797ac03b

Do you have Abbyy Finereader installed on the PC? A number of people have reported that removing it overcomes problems with 2013.  See:

Office programs may crash with the FineReader add-in installed at:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2755838

Do you have “Fun Tools” add-in? A number of people have reported that removing it overcomes problems with 2013

Do you have Toshiba Book Reader installed on the PC?  It has been reported that uninstalling that brings Office back to working status.

Do you have the Acrobat PDFMaker add-in.  It has been reported that uninstalling that overcomes an issue with a message appearing that states "The document contains macros. Macro support for this application is disabled. Features requiring VBA are not available. Would you like to open this document as a read only?"

Also see: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2013_release-word/microsoft-word-has-stopped-working-when-i-close/8375b5b6-4f7e-46ed-a02b-90152ecad287#LastReplyand

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_home-word/word-and-excel-2013-crashing-on-windows-7/5389390c-e989-4c8e-8fe0-62673f1410ce?page=4#LastReply

It appears that there may be some hardware incompatibilities as well.  If you have the NVIDIA driver NVWGF2UM.DLL, try renaming it as: NVWGF2UM.oldas was mentioned in:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2013_release-word/microsoft-word-has-stopped-working-when-i-close/8375b5b6-4f7e-46ed-a02b-90152ecad287#LastReply

From the File tab, select Options and then click on Advanced and then in the Display section of the dialog, check the box for Disable hardware graphics acceleration

For the error message "There was a problem sending the command to the program", use Windows Explorer to access the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15 folder and right click on WINWORD.EXE then on Properties, go to the Compatibility tab and uncheck all the boxes.  It has also been reported that the problem can be overcome by editing the registry at HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Word.Document.12\shell\Open and deleting the ddeexec key.

The ddeexec can also be deleted from

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Word.DocumentMacroEnabled.12\shell\Open.

That fix is described at ...

http://www.dilloway.co.uk/there-was-a-problem-sending-the-command.html

It has been reported that uninstalling FastPictureView and FastPictureViewer Pro… overcomes the issue of the Minimize, Maximize, Close and Help buttons not being visible in Office 2013.

If you have a Canon 8350 printer, try using the Canon MF8000 UFRI LT XPS driver as detail in the post by Riad Amstha on April 14 in the thread at:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_365hp-word/office-2013-crashes-with-canon-8350-printer/e2bf6530-92e0-47ef-b6ec-e803a91793d0?page=3#LastReply

For the problem of nothing appearing when you start typing in a blank document in Word in Office 365 Home Premium, and you hear a bell sound with each keypress, but no characters appear, disable the SMARTInk add-in for an interactive whiteboard.

Thanks, Doug, but nothing you said (and I clicked on all the links) is relevant. I have none of the add-ins or driver you mentioned.

Maybe my post wasn't' clear: my issue is NOT with Word crashing or not starting.

It is with Word NOT SAVING MY OPEN FILES TO WHICH I HAVE PUT 4 HOURS OF WORK INTO.  Anything that involves restarting Word will, if done before these files are saved, will cause me to lose my changes. Sorry my original post wasn't clear on the issue. 

The only good news is I downloaded and installed OpenOffice Writer and copied the contents of all my open unsaved files into it. Open Office does a much better job than Google docs of preserving the formatting of my files. But I'll still lose a lot if I can't this issue solved. 

Hi Angela,

Is the computer on a network or domain?

Let us change the default printer to Microsoft XPS Document Writer or OneNote 2013 and then try saving Word documents and check the behavior.

If changing the default printer to OneNote 2013 or Microsoft XPS shows works, then you may update the drivers for the problem printer and verify the results.

For more information on how to change the default printer on Windows 7, refer to the following link.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Change-your-default-printer

You may also refer to the steps mentioned under the section ‘Manual steps to troubleshoot problems that occur when you start or use Word’ in the following article and check if it helps.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/921541

If you still have issues, you may reply and we’ll be happy to help you.

Thank you.

In my case, simply closing all open Word documents results in immediate saving of all unsaved documents. By all I mean that Word will save all unsaved files to disk when you close the very last Word window, not when you close the window for a given document (but have some another Word window open).

I guess Microsoft's logic behind this behavior is that there is no hurry, the text is safe in memory, why save it to disk now if we can do it later. If you close the Word window for this file and then opens the file again, Word perfectly shows the new, updated contents from its cache as if it were saved to disk, but faster. So what's your problem.

Naturally, with this logic, when you update a document, save it (you think you save), and send the file by email (or copy it to USB, etc.), you are sending the old copy, or just empty document, without any warning. Which can cause huge problems -- just imagine possible consequences (including security) of unknowingly sending out an old copy of a document.

The fact that when you open the document again you see updated contents makes things worse because the Word is lying to you as to the contents of the file on the disk -- you see what is not not really in your file but only in Word's internal cache. An advanced user can see the actual file contents with something like Far Manager, but an ordinary user has no clue as to what the file she is sending or copying really contains.

There is a small cross icon next to the "Word is saving ..." message. If you click on it, Word stops attempting to save your document. However, when you close the very last Word window, all unsaved file are still saved normally.

Hi Francisco,

This post has already aged. I highly suggest you to create a new thread and kindly put the right tagging and the information needed for us to assist you better.

Regards.

I'm checking in on this thread long after it was first posted, because I too have been caught in a loop while trying to save a Word document (as docx). I noticed the most recent post on problems of this ilk was in December 2016.  I am running Office / Word 2016 and twice in the last two days I tried to save Word docs in which I had pasted text from a web page as RTF.  It would act like it was saving it but it never would and never with the name you gave it, and would come right back to save or save as dialog. The files that it "claimed" to have save were either non-existent or empty.  This to me is clearly appears a bug.

I found that this did not occur, i.e. Word behaved normally if you did not paste the material into the document as RTF. Instead I pasted the material as plain text and edited it and it worked fine.  You might also wish to try pasting the material as html.

Last, regarding saving: Another user commented that it only happened with docx files.  In an emergency, you might wish to try saving the file as doc, just so you don't lose everything.

Funny, I saw this reply yesterday, months after the last time I've had this problem. I didn't recall pasting any RTF text into the doc to cause the problem but one doc is long and old so can't be sure.

Then today, for first time in months, the problem occurs in the 2 docs I have open in word. One is the long old doc that might have had RTF text pasted in. But the other is a new and short doc that I doubt I've ever copied RTF into.

I tried saving the .docx file as .doc to make the problem go away. It didn't. For the new .docs files, I again see in bottom right corner "WORD IS SAVING [FILENAME].DOC.  The message doesn't change. 

And in File Manager, both files are shown as having 0 bytes.

I do believe nierenj  got it right when he said this is clearly a bug in Word13.  (At least I think I'm using 13). No "ABOUT" in the Help menu.