When opening a word doc in office 2016 the system is totally freezing, mouse and keyboard dead and video frozen in time, Could you help?

It seems no matter how sophisticated our computers get, we still have to deal with unresponsive or frozen programs. 

Last week’s article was about how to do this on a MAC.  Today we’re going to look at how to do it in Windows.

Click here to read the MAC version of this article.

Unfortunately, this does not usually work as well on a Windows computer as it does on a MAC.  Windows computers generally have more instances of programs freezing up.  They also have many more instances of the entire computer freezing up. 

That being said however, it still works quite often and can save you a lot of time.  It usually only takes a few moments to stop a program.  It can take many minutes to start Windows back up though. 

It’s also not good for your computer to be shut down in the middle of running something.  This can leave files in an open state instead of being closed in an orderly manner.  It can also cause information to be lost and your Windows installation to degrade over time. 

Always try to shut down a non-responsive or frozen program before hitting the power button and shutting the computer down.

Another thing to keep in mind is that this process of stopping a program can sometimes take a long time.  I’ve seen it take 10 to 20 minutes before.  I’ve also had seemingly stuck programs take that long to respond. 

What that means is sometimes we need to be very patient.  Let’s say you have Microsoft Word open.  You’ve been working on a very important 200 page document.  You click on print and then try to change the printer settings.

Suddenly everything stops and nothing inside Word will work.  This is the time to ask yourself a few questions.  Have you saved the file recently (you should save important files frequently!)

How important is this document?  How much time do you have to deal with this problem?  The answer to these questions will determine how you will deal with the problem.

Let me explain.  When a program freezes up, often times it is not permanently frozen.  As I said earlier, sometimes it can take as long as 20 minutes to respond.  If what you’re doing is really important, it’s best to let Windows figure out the problem.

Once the problem is figured out and the program responds again, don’t continue working. Close the program if you can and then shut down the computer using the shutdown command in Windows.  When it restarts, the problem will usually be fixed.

Just as Windows installations degrade over time, Windows sessions do too.  Shutting it down occasionally resets everything and will usually drastically improve your computing experience.

If the program will not quit no matter how long you wait, then you need to try and force it to quit.  The simplest way to do this is to right click on the program in the task bar and then click Close (Windows XP and Vista) or Close Window (Windows 7).  See the screen shot below.

 Again, give the program a chance to close before moving on to the next step or shutting down the computer.   

The other way to shut down a program is by using the Task Manager.  To start the Task Manager in Windows XP, press CTRL, ALT, and Delete at the same time.  Only do this once.  It may take a while to respond.  If you do it twice, when the computer does respond, it will shut down completely. 

In Windows Vista and 7 pressing these keys will bring up an intermediate screen where you can click on the Task Manager to start it.  To skip the intermediate screen, just press CTRL, SHIFT, and ESC.

When the Task Manager starts, go to the Applications tab.  Scroll down to the program you want to stop and then click on End Task at the bottom of the window.  Give the program adequate time to stop. 

If these methods don’t work, you will probably have to restart your computer to fix the problem.  If the rest of your computer is working, you might want to try doing something else and seeing if the program eventually stops. 

There is one more thing to show you.  If a program is frozen and your mouse is too, you may still be able to stop the program.  Windows has provided a way to do this just using the keyboard. 

Press the  Windows Start Key.  This has the Windows symbol on it and sometimes the word Start.  It’s between CTRL and ALT at the bottom left of your keyboard.

In Windows XP, use the arrow keys to get to the Run command on the right side of the start menu. 

When Run is highlighted, press Enter.  Type Taskmgr.exe in the box that comes up next.  Then tab down to OK and press Enter.

In Windows Vista and 7, just type Taskmgr.exe into the box that comes up after you press the Start (Windows) key.

The rest of this explanation is the same for all three versions of Windows.

When the task manager opens, use your arrow keys to select the Applications tab.  Then press the Tab key to go to the list of open programs.  Now arrow down to the desired program and press Alt E to end it.

If your mouse or keyboard is locked up during any of this, you will want to restart your computer after you get all open programs closed.  To restart using the keyboard (assuming it’s working) press CTRL, ALT, and Delete again, all at once.

So there you have it!  Now you know how to correctly stop a stuck program in Windows.  If you enjoyed this article or have something you’d like to share on this subject with my readers, please leave a comment.  it’s always a pleasure to hear from you!

If you you are enjoying the site, please click the “Like” Button in the “Find us on Facebook” box in the left sidebar.  If you’d like to learn more about making your computer work better, check out my free 5-day video e-course called How to Turbo-Charge Your Computer.  Just click here, enter your name and email, and you’ll get immediate access.  Your computer will love you for it!

thanks for the invitation

But did I deal with Office 2016 till now

Thank you so much for your help.

I uninstalled Office and installed Office but the behavior persists.  I have also googled around and tried uninstalling anti-virus programs but no luck .One friend told me that's freeze  was probably caused by a buggy windows update! I believe that she is correct. I have tried changing virus checkers, using Windows8.1 and, using Word and, rolling back video driver to known stable version, and updating the BIOS. I hope that a new update will be released soon as I have to work around the issue now.

agree with expert answers above

Have you tried Cleaning Up Local disk C? if the error files are dumped more offend then Temporary files and error data files increases and make your PC run slower and sometimes programs get frozen till you 'End Task' for Task Manager.

I fully agree with the answers been added by EXPERTS...............Thanks.

 Agree With ACHMAD SURJANI & Other Expert

Thanks for invitation

I amagreeing with my colleague’s answer

First try to uninstall the software and Re-install it or even go back to a restore point, if it's not a genuine copy try it in other PC, also check all your drivers and update it to latest

Ghada, your friend is absolutely correct. Windows 10 and Office 2016 are new release. Expect the buggy part of it. Microsoft will release their new OS or new application in order to receive feed backs from the consumer and base on that feed backs they can fix the bug. My advice, use the second OS and Office from the new release. Meaning, use win 8.1 and MS Office 2013 so that you can do your work smoothly. In win 10 and MS Office 2016 case, you will need to wait until Microsoft will release an update to fix the bugs of their newly develop OS like Win 10 and MS Office 2016 in particular. Hope this will help.    

The bug, Microsoft word not responding does not occur due to the internal failure of the software program “MS office” but many a time, by the third party applications. Spotting the trouble maker behind this bug will help you make the WORD stable again.

From the beginner who has just learnt to operate the computer to the veterans, Microsoft word is being used by everyone. The reason is simple: This rich text editor comes with the handy features that support the creation and editing of resumes, process manuals, project reports and the many. Although Microsoft word is often referred as one of the most stable applications from the house of Microsoft, sometimes it crashes and throws an annoying error message “Microsoft word not responding”. As it freezes the window and locks up all the word functionality, the only option you will be left with will be none other than terminating the program and restarting it again via the task manager. Yes, you are right. It leads to a non recoverable data loss sometimes. At the worst cases, the word application tends to crash again and again. I have been there once too so I know how annoying it would be!

Before reaching the solution to this bug, it will be useful to know the culprits which contribute to the unexpected MS word crash.

Tips

It is suggested to enable the “Auto save” feature in Microsoft office programs so that you can protect the work and avoid the data losses during

• Unexpected power outages
• Unexpected application crashes
• Internal bugs occur in Microsoft program itself

By enabling this option you can set your currently working document to be saved automatically at x time interval. For example if you specify the time interval as 5 minutes, new data in your word file will be saved every 5 minutes once.

You can take up a step by step guide on how to enable auto save and recover in word by clicking here. 

There exist several reasons which can crash Microsoft word abruptly and throw that “not responding status”. The major trouble makers are listed below

• Despite of all the possible causes third party plug-ins are identified as the major trouble makers.
• Virus and Malware Infections
• You are using the Microsoft office program on a  mapped network drive which is currently offline. When the mapped drive is connected with a low resource running slow level computer then it may also create this issue.

Remember, whenever the window freezes and throws “not responding” error, there are ways using which you can recover the unsaved data to certain level but it may not become be possible at rare occasions.

Given below are some of the foolproof ways suggested by Microsoft and various forums to resolve the issue Microsoft word is not responding. These are also tested by our team before made it to public.  

There may have been incompatibility issues with the third party Add-ins. Off all the causes, this one happens more frequently. To ensure whether it’s the case, check out the event log produced.

So far, many of the word 2013 users have come up with a “Microsoft word not responding” error with the below Add-ins.

• Acrobat PDFMaker
• ABBYY FineReader
• Toshiba Book Reader
• Fun Tools

If finally you found add-ins as problem causing factors, try disabling all the add-ins in safe mode.

Here is how. Microsoft office program can be launched in “User initiated safe mode” in 2 different ways.   

Method 1: Using the Start Menu

Click Start–>All Programs–>Microsoft Office

Hold the Ctrl key+ Click the Microsoft office program of your choice.

In our case, Click on MS Word

It should open MS word in user initiated safe mode. If it doesn’t, try initiating the safe mode using method 2.  

Method 2: Using the Command Prompt

 Hold win key + R. It should open the Run Comment box.

Type “WinWord /safe” without the quotes. There is a space between “Winword” and “/”

You should have able to launch word program in safe mode now. Disable all the third party plug-ins that work in sync with word program.

Here is a simple how to.

• Click on File–>Word Options.
• In the appearing window click on Add-ins from the left pane.
• At the bottom of current window, you can see the drop down box with the label Manage. By default, you can see the value “.com Add-ins” as assigned to this box. Leave as it is and click “Go”.
• It would trigger a window with the list of all add-ins.
• Uncheck the check boxes which will disable them to all user accounts.
• Click OK.

Check the word program and see whether the Microsoft word not responding issue persists. By activating the safe mode you can finish off the task whatever you were doing before the crash. Finish off and save your work. Sometimes, you may not figure out the trouble maker through event log. At times, still you will want to identify the add-in which has crashed your work recently. To do this, try activating the add-ins one by one and check out the effect every time. Until you activate the problem causing add-in, everything will work fine and when it is activated; you will end up with the same problem once again. Make a note of this plug-in and never enable it again.

Now you can terminate the safe mode by clicking on File->exit program. When next time you re-initiate the program, it will be launched in the normal mode.

Having the outdated graphics card on your system may also cause the bug, MS word not responding. Check whether your computer runs the updated version, if it’s outdated, update the driver from the manufacturer website or contact the vendor.

Check whether it helps resolving the issue.  

If your Microsoft word crashes every now and then or it works fine only in safe mode, disabling the Hardware Graphics Acceleration may do the trick and solve the issue.

You can disable the hardware acceleration of graphics using UI or registry editor.  

Disable Hardware Graphics Acceleration Using UI

Open a blank word document

Click on File–>Options

From the appearing word options window, choose the menu Advanced from the left pane.

Scroll down the window and under the section named display, enable the check box “disable hardware graphics acceleration”.

Click ok.

Using Registry Editor

1. Open Run dialogue box by pressing the key combination, windows key + R. Type Regedit and hit Ok
2. It will open the Registry editor.
3. Expand the left pane of the registry editor window and navigate to the path

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Microsoft\\Office\\15.0\\Common 

1. Right click on common and create a subkey with the name “Graphics” by choosing New->Key.
2. Select the Graphics subkey. On the right pane click on the blank space and select New->Dword Value. Enter the name of the new DWORD as “DisableHardwareAccelaration” as shown in the image. 

1. Double click on this key and set its value to be 1.
2. Click ok
3. Restart the system so the new changes will be effective.

If the problem remains unchanged then try repairing the Office program.

When Microsoft office program crashes every now and then sometimes just restarting the application will do the trick. If it’s not, try repairing it and restart the computer. As this process resets all the registry changes made due to the third party Add-ins, it will bring the program to its stable state again.

• Launch Control Panel
• Click on the item “Program And Features “
• Select the Microsoft office application that needs to be repaired.
• Complete the Reparation process
• If this process does not resolve the issue, you may need to uninstall and re-install the Microsoft Office Package once.

You might be using Microsoft office in a mapped Network. In such cases, if you get the error Microsoft office not responding, you may need to disconnect your system from all the network drives.

• Right click on “My Computer” à click “Disconnect Network Drive”.
• From the dialog box triggered, choose the drive that requires to be disconnected.
• Click ok
• Repeat the same until all the offline network drives are disconnected from your system.
• Now launch the Microsoft word and check whether the issue remains. In the most probable cases, your Microsoft office 2010 should start to work normal now.

When Microsoft office program throws not responding error, sometimes using the Application Recovery Tool offers a handy solution.

To utilize this feature, open Microsoft Office Application Recovery by clicking through Start-> Programs->Microsoft Office Tools

This will list all the currently running office programs with its current state (running, not responding etc).

Though the multiple instances of the same program are running simultaneously, only one instance of the program will be displayed in the dialog box.

Now select the application you want to recover and click “Recover Application”. It will force the application close and restart the application by recovering the unsaved data.

If Microsoft word is not responding or it does not work properly you take up the following troubleshooting procedure suggested by Microsoft.

Delete the Word Data Registry Key

Open the registry and spot the data word data registry subkey that corresponds to the version of your MS Office program.

• Word 2010: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Microsoft\\Office\\14.0\\Word\\Data
• Word 2007: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Microsoft\\ Office\\12.0\\Word\\Data
• Word 2003: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Microsoft\\ Office\\11.0\\Word\\Data
• Word 2002: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Microsoft \\Office\\10.0\\Word\\Data

1. Select Data on the left pane and click File à Save this file under the name “Wddata.reg” on your desktop.
2. Delete it using the option EditàDelete from the file menu.
3. Close the registry editor.

Launch the word program now. It’s great, if the word works properly and not causing any issue. If it’s not, restore the backed-up word data registry key from your desktop.  

Changes in the original installed files may make the application hang. So whenever the programs linked with the Microsoft word gets infected by virus or malware programs, it will lead to the frequent application crashes. In such cases, keeping the system free from security threats becomes an inevitable. Update the security software program and run the full system scans periodically.  

One of the most common reasons behind the bug Microsoft word not responding in windows 7 operating system is damaged registry. As virus and malware infections change the registry values, restoring the registry settings to its original state by cleaning the registry will help resolve this issue.  

Are you running the licensed copy of Microsoft office program? If your answer is yes, try contacting the Microsoft office customer support team. They will resolve this issue in a professional way.