Word 2011 - Freezes when pasting text

And to add to what our members stated here and those members who posted in the Apple forum that Randy linked to....

I haven't seen this occur when copying and pasting large or small text and graphics in either Word 2008 nor Word 2011. That doesn't mean it isn't a problem; it just means it's not happening to everyone.

However, I don't doubt for a minute that it's Microsoft's problem. They have been known to cover up errors and bugs like this with a later update. Let's hope that a future MS update takes care of this.

In the meantime, for those who are having a problem, I suggest posting the full extent of it in the Microsoft Mac Office forum for Word. MS frequently monitors these forums and will usually respond to a re-occuring error like this.

chscag said:

I haven't seen this occur when copying and pasting large or small text and graphics in either Word 2008 nor Word 2011. That doesn't mean it isn't a problem; it just means it's not happening to everyone.

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I make my living writing. I use Microsoft Word just about all day, everyday. I haven't had any freezing/crashing problems with any version of Word since before the advent of OS X...about a decade ago.

However, I think that it is a good idea never to upgrade to a new version of Office/Word until there have been at least two updates released. Office is a large complex piece of software and one gets the impression that Microsoft is always rushing to get the latest version out the door. Usually after a couple of updates, each new version of Office is really solid.

Just so that folks don't get too carried away with bashing Microsoft (which is admittedly both satisfying and fun to do) remember that the same rule applies to new versions of the Mac OS. I still remember lots of folks having their external Firewire hard drives erased by an early version of OS X 10.4, for instance.

___________________________________________

Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)

Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance
OS X Maintenance And Troubleshooting
___________________________________________

Word 2011 Freezing

I recently installed Word 2011 (v. 14.0.2) on my office iMac. Word freezes almost every time I (a) try to drag and drop text from another document (Word or .pdf) into the Word document I'm working on, and (b) almost every time I try to drag selected text from one part of the active Word document to another part of the same document. Does anyone know of a way to keep this from happening?

I don't but the typical "troubleshooting" steps that you'll find at the Office for Mac forums will involve Font Weeding and repairing disk permissions. YMMV. More importantly, there is a service pack due to be released this coming week that has quite a few fixes Office for Mac SP1- so hang tight if the Font Weeding or Permissions doesn't solve your problem as it may be addressed by this service pack.

Thanks. I'll see what happens.

It would be nice if SP-1 brought back document preview. Something I used quite often before upgrading to 2011.

When I installed 2011, the installer did not remove Office 2008. I may just go back to using it.

It may not work right. When I installed 2011 it overwrote many of the files that were applicable to MS Office 2008. It also re-writes your profile for 2011 and as far as I know, there's no way to have duplicate profiles without separate accounts.

Actually, I switched back to 08, so that I could get a project finished on time. I like Find & Replace better in 08. In the 11 version, you get that side-panel to pop up, but it will not close once it's open. The only way that sidebar will quit for me is if I close the entire document.

Office 2011 For Mac Issue

Solution worked for me of:

word > preferences > edit > "unclick" use smart cut and paste

Thanks, Josh. I'll give it a try.

This same thing is happening to me ALL THE TIME. I too have a brand new macbook pro, tons of ram and HD, constantly update, fixed permissions and duplicate fonts, etc. My word docs crash 3-4 times per day. Word is almost unusable. Any help???

posterdavid said:

This same thing is happening to me ALL THE TIME. I too have a brand new macbook pro, tons of ram and HD, constantly update, fixed permissions and duplicate fonts, etc. My word docs crash 3-4 times per day. Word is almost unusable. Any help???

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There a lots of folks who have reported this problem to Microsoft. Microsoft always gives the same suggestion to solve the problem. Here is what they suggest:


1) Quit all Microsoft applications.

2) Track down all instances of pre-2008 Normal template on your
computer, and drag them to your desktop. The file is called simply
"Normal" and has no extension.

3) Find and drag the file Normal.dotm to your desktop. Unless you have
moved it, it should be in
/Users/ ~ /Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates/

4) If the following files exist, Remove or rename them:

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Word Settings (10)

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Word Settings (11)

5) ~/Library/Preferences/com.Microsoft.Word.plist

6) ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2008 (the whole folder!)

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2011 (the whole folder!)

7) Then Repair Permissions with Disk Utility.

Start Apple OS X Font Book

9) Run "Find Duplicates"

10) Run "Resolve Duplicates".

11) Now delete from the computer all the fonts Font Book just switched off.

12) Shut down the computer and re-start it (to force OS X to run its
clean-up routines).

Be careful and thorough with this. The sequence of the steps is
important; if you omit any steps because you have already done them
previously, or leave any of the old files behind, Word will find them
and won't replace them. Do it right and Word will construct a new,
clean, set of preferences and everything should now work.

I'm starting to hear that there is now a definitive solution to the problem that Word users have been having with Word crashing when cutting and pasting. Interestingly, the solution doesn't come from Microsoft, but from Apple.

Apple has released Snow Leopard Font Update
Snow Leopard Font Update

This update requires that you currently have OS X 10.6.7 installed.

Still hanging on paste with latest updates

I have the latest OS X and installed the font update. I did all the steps above to clean preferences and templates. Word is still sporadically hanging on paste, text or images. I going to try uncorrupting the document (save as web page and reload) and turning off smart paste.

I've been using Word 11 for some time, and this hanging just started happening last week or so. Something is clearly wrong.

May have been a template proble

I saved as web page and reloaded. Haven't seen a hang yet today. I'm beginning to suspect there was so drying wrong with the template.

paulsaints said:

Slow paste in word for office 2011 (a long 5-10 second hang) drove me nuts until I did the following.

File / Preference / Edit
turn off "use smart cut and paste"

-Paul W

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Thank you. Looks like its helping me!

This problem also occurs with Word 2003 and 2007 for windows.

I have smart cut and paste off. It happens on doc and docx files. I also have the header duplication issue and spellchecking issue.

The header duplication issue could be related if pasting occurs while the header is being duplicated and the program gets confused as to where the data is going.

It could also be related to the spellchecking issue. I will test this myself.

another report of same issue

Just to add my voice to the chorus. I have the same issue with copying/pasting, even small quantities of text. Interestingly, I never had this problem in Word 2008.

I'll try the above-mentioned fixes and report back.

yewborn said:

Just to add my voice to the chorus. I have the same issue with copying/pasting, even small quantities of text. Interestingly, I never had this problem in Word 2008.

I'll try the above-mentioned fixes and report back.

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A quick follow-up, I checked and I have 'smart cut and paste' turned off and still have this problem regularly.