Word Mac issues

My Mac and I are still getting to know each other, but it seems to have some issues with wordmac; it randomly comes up with an error box that tells me it has encountered a problem and needs to close, but it will save my work and return me to it on restart - which doesn't happen.
As this only occurred infrequently, I wasn't too concerned, however, I have downloaded and installed Endnote, which is a referencing program (fabulous for studying), but it just does not want to play with wordmac - shutting down within minutes of trying to use the two together and I loose everything.
Problem is, I am doing a masters online and my university is insisting that I use Endnote and I have already lost marks for not using it appropriately in one assignment.
I live on a tiny island in a remote location and am unable to access any support here, any suggestions?

Which version of Word for Mac are you using? If 2011 - there is an updated version of Endnote you should move to. When Office 2011 first came out - I don't believe it played well with Endnote out of the gate - or vice versa. Why is your university mandating Endnote? There are several other options out there - Mendeley, Zotero, just to name two free options. Are you using the 4.0.2 update? EndNote X4.0.2 Update Also make sure you've updated to the latest Office 2011 service pack (again, assuming we're talking about Office 2011)

thanks Brian

thanks so much for your reply Brian, and I apologise for omitting the details; I have office 2008 and recently made sure I had the latest update (although it made no difference), and am running endnote x4 (not too sure about the update though, I will look into this).
I used to have a 'regular' pc, and if I had one still I would probably uninstall office and reinstall a newer version, however, I haven't gotten to know my mac well enough to do that yet!

If the worst comes to the worst & Microsoft never gets around to releasing a stable version of Endnote for Mac, you can get the "VirtualBox" emulator for free and Windows XP (good enough to run Office 2010 on) is pretty cheap these days...

No need to do a full install of Windows, just run it on your Mac desktop & run the PC version of Office/Endnote in it