Word crashed. But when you go to re-open it, it refuses to do so. What’s happening here and how do I fix it.

How to Force Word to Close after it Crashes

When Word crashes, the Winword.exe file may still be running behind the scenes. I know.

If it is running, why won’t it open? There is no easy answer to this but here’s how you can get it re-started.

What you have to do is close this the Winword.exe before you re-open Word as otherwise system conflicts may arise, i.e. you may not be able to open Word, as the system sees that Winword.exe is currently running.

To close Winword.exe let’s use the Task Manager

1. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL. In the Windows Security dialog box, click Task Manager.

2. On the Processes tab, click any instance of Winword.exe, and then click End Process.

3. Close the Windows Task Manager, and then re-start Word.

Final Tip

One final tip here is that when you re-open Microsoft Word, make sure that the files you were looking for can be opened.

If you have difficulty with this, please take a look at this very detailed tutorial over on the Klariti site.

Related posts:

1. How to Open and Repair a Damaged Word file
2. How to Recover a Lost File in Word 2007 or Word 2003
3. Office 2003 to 2007 User Interface Guides

You can “force” Word to recover a document after it has crashed. Microsoft Word tries to automatically recover a damaged document if it detects a problem with the file. Here’s how.

Microsoft Word tries to automatically recover a damaged document if it detects a problem with the file.

When this happens, it will re-open Word and show you a version of the document – before it crashed. It may also show you a second version of the document, which will be a second version of the document, usually recovered with the ‘autosave’ function.

How to Recover Text from a Crashed Word file

1. Open Word, and in the File menu, click Open.

2. In the File of type list, click All Files *.*.

3. In the Open dialog box, select your document.

4. Point to the arrow on the Open button, and then click Open and Repair.

This will open the Word file.

The style and formatting may be slightly damaged but you will have most of the text and can, at least, use it to rebuild a new document.

One final suggestion is to copy the material into a new Microsoft Word document, just in case there is some gremlin in the recovered document.

Does this work for you?

Let me know if your system is different. I’m on XP and use 2003 & 2007. Maybe XP is different.

Related posts:

1. How to Recover a Lost File in Word 2007 or Word 2003
2. How to Fix Damaged & Corrupt Word 2007 Documents – Part 2
3. How to Recover Corrupt Microsoft Word documents