Guys -- I have been having this problem for over 1 year... new Dell XPS 15 laptop... WIndows 7.... I finally figured it out, and have to share it with you guys:

1) Word crashes ALL the time-- about 80 - 90%, when opening / closing documents, and when opening / closing Word.
"Word has stopped working..."

2) The COPY command copies a black blob oval when you try to PASTE. I installed CLIPX to see what was in the clipboard, and it showed the black blob oval AND a Bluetooth symbol

What was the problem?

Intel Bluetooth drivers

I installed the Intel Bluetooth drivers using:

1) Control Panel - Device Manager
AND
2) Control Panel > Programs & Features > Uninstall
AND
3) REGEDIT > HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > software > microsoft > office > word > addins
and got rid of the btmoffice.connect stuff....

SO FAR NO MORE CRASHES and NO MORE COPYING strange characters!!!