Word file hangs Word...

[Boblevien]

Hi,

I've been editing a 1.6 mb .DOC file (in Word 9 - Win 2000) which contains quite a few images but is nothing particularly complicated. Had to amend a bunch of stuff and make some new additions. Changed the style sheet a bit but nothing complex. Added a load of new images and saved the file - now measures 3.7Mb 'cos of the new images.

Open it next day and Word instantly hangs. Open any other document - no problem. Try all sorts of work arounds - this file always hangs Word (on three different machines running both win 2000 and <spit> XP Home </spit>

Take a deep breath and start again - open the original document and start the amendments and additions. Save the document frequently. At some point, when I'm not aware of having done anything out of the ordinary I load the latest version (now 1.7Mb) and it starts hanging the program again.

I know there's not a lot to go on here but has anyone any ideas? It's a lot of work I'm losing.

Bob Levien.

 

[Dreamboat]

Sure Bob.

For one thing, I'd likely be able to get your doc open for you with Word XP; it's recovery features are much stronger than 2000 or 97's. Or if you know anyone else that has Word XP...

For another, keep your file size down by using Edit-Paste Special-As a picture when you put pictures in your files. You should see a dramatic difference in size--doesn't work well with Office clipart or drawing objects, but works great with *external* formats like jpg, gif, etc. Anne Troy
Dreamboat@TheWordExpert.com
Anne@MrExcel.com

 

[Boblevien]

Hi Anne,

Thnaks for that - it's very helpful. I've managed to recover the text using Word 2002 in Win XP (is that what you meant?) - but I've lost all the (extensive) formatting and layout (lots of it was laid out with tables) and all the images.

The recovered document consists of the text (28 pages) then it refers to an &quot;Embed paper document&quot; and there follow 659 pages of ASCCI squit - mainly Japanese characters, dingbats and other similar stuff. Then, it suddenly becomes intelligable and appears to contain info about the style sheet, location of image files, document history etc - further 15 odd pages.

What do you reckon - do I have any chance of recovering any more than that?

Thanks for the suggestion about the images - I'll try that.

Cheers,

Bob Levien
bob@ebullient.co.uk

 

[Dreamboat]

Bob, please email it. I hate to see you waste it if there's a chance. Don't worry--strictly confidential. Anne Troy
Dreamboat@TheWordExpert.com
Anne@MrExcel.com