Hello all,



I am new here, so I do hope this is the correct forum in which to post. I have been having some really weird problems with Office lately. Whenever I click on the 'Review' tab in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, the program crashes. Everything else works fine, and the problem has only been happening in the last 24 hours. I have tried re-installing, deleting registry files, system restore... the Microsoft Help Desk was no use either!

Has anyone come across this problem before? Could it be a virus or something (I also ran a virus scan, but it came clean)? Any help would be appreciated!

Cheers.

Have you tried running Office Apps in Safe Mode? To do this, hold down the Ctrl key while starting the App. If the App runs correctly, that suggests a faulty Addin is the cause. To find such Addins, check under File|Options|Addins. If you have any 3rd-party Addins, try disabling them all, then re-enabling one at a time and checking whether the problem returns. If so, you've identified the faulty one. If the problem is caused by a faulty Addin, you may need to uninstall it.

A system restore, to a date & time before the problem condition arose, should have been enough to resolve the problems. If you did that but the problems remained, that suggests a hardware fault. Of course, if it's been a while since you previously used the 'Review' tab, the problem may have been there for much longer than you realize.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Thanks for the response! I tried running in Safe Mode, and it ran fine. And so I removed all the add-ins I could find in Safe Mode (only 2; the majority only appeared in regular mode for some reason). But... it still doesn't work in regular mode. How can I disable the rest of the add-ins in regular mode (Active Application, Inactive Application, & Document Related Add-ins)? When I highlight them and click 'go,' there is no 'disable option. Am I missing something here? Is there a way to do a clean uninstall, delete ALL files related to Word, and reinstall (again!)? Thanks very much...

In that case, it's one (or more) of the Addins that only appear in Regular mode that's causing problems. Accordingly, you'll need to start Word in regular mode and disable the various Addins from there. This isn't an issue of deleting files relating to Word, per se, but of tracking down & correcting a problem with an Addin. You could mess around with Office ad nauseum and not resolve things until you fix the underlying Addin problem.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Great, thanks again! My only problem is that when I go to File>>Options>>Add-ins in regular mode (at least in Office 2013), the only way I can select something is by choosing a group from the 'Manage' menu (ex. COM Add-ins). When I click on this, I am given no choice to disable them... Am I missing a step?

If you go to File|Options|Addins and click on the 'Go' button next to the Manage dropdown, the various COM addins will be listed, you can disable any of these by unchecking their checkboxes. Depending on your System permissions, you may also be able to remove them. Note that the Manage dropdown also lists other kinds of addin. You should also check 'Word Addins' and 'Templates'. FWIW Bluetooth Addins have given a lot of grief over the years.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

OK! Well, I did as you suggested. I had only two COM add-ins, which I disabled. I additionally looked in Templates and Word Add-ins, though I didn't see any menus of add-ins there, nor any means of disabling them. And... the problem still persists. Perhaps I should just accept that it's unsolvable. Sigh. Thanks again for your advice!

It's odd that Word works OK in Safe mode, but not in Normal mode with no Addins. It's possible you have a corrupt Normal template or BuildingBlocks template. If you look in the thread https://www.msofficeforums.com/word/...locations.html, you'll see where these are usually found. Close Word, then Delete or rename the Normal.dotm and BuildingBlocks.dotx files. This should cause Word to create new ones when it restarts.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Well, I tried that too. Deleted the above files. Nothing. I'm starting to think that nothing short of a complete reformat will fix this thing, and as doing so all because of a faulty 'Review' tab in Word would be silly, I guess I'll just have to live with it. Le sigh. Thanks for your continued help!