Hi Tosh,
Your description suggests there's a problem with your Office installation.
On Macs, it is important to keep the OS up-to-date with all patches. If multiple updates are required, restarting between updates is important. After applying any updates it's also very important to run the Disk Utility program (located in Applications/Utilities folder). Use it to Repair Permissions on the Macintosh HD drive and reboot after running the utility.
A common cause of Office crashes on Macs is putting Office in any other folder other than Macintosh HD/Applications/Microsoft Office [Version]. If you've put it anywhere else or renamed the folder, that will cause issues.
For repair/reinstallation procedures, see:
http://word.mvps.org/Mac/RemoveReinstall.html,
http://www.office.mvps.org/install/r...ffice2011.html. For Office 2011 un-installation, see
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2398768 After reinstalling, allow the AutoUpdate utility to update Office to the current update (see above).