Word 2008 crashes

I am going crazy with Word 2008 crashes; all the time, apropos of nothing. The first crash will restart with recovered documents; after that, no recovered documents. I just installed a few days ago; did NOT have Word 2004; Using the most recent Mac OS as I just bought my MacBook; tried to download Word updates, says can't install. Also says I don't need any updates. HELP!!

Have you by chance installed and used "Monolingual" or any other utility which removes languages from OS X? If you don't know what "Monolingual" is and haven't used a language removal utility, ignore this. However, if you did, see the paragraph below and uninstall - reinstall Word or Office.

If Word 2008 is crashing for no apparent reason and you can not install updates (current version is 12.1.5) I suggest you uninstall Word or Office 2008 whichever applies, and reinstall it. Be sure to use the Office or Word 2008 uninstaller. Do not drag the files to the trash.

Regards.

Hi. No, I haven't installed anything or changed anything in Word. I also checked and I have all the updates.

OK. I'm assuming from the first post that your MacBook is a new model. I don't think the crashes have anything to do with hardware at this point so my suggestion to you regarding an uninstall - reinstall still stands. Remember, if you uninstall and reinstall, you'll need to download and install updates once again.

Regards.