Hi,


I hope someone can help me with a very annoying problem in Word (Office 2019).


After a week away, I came back to Word to be greeted by a series of errors when loading an existing file.

Firstly, I got a dialogue message claiming the document file was damaged but thankfully it loaded and did not appear to have been affected in any way, except that the dictionary was not operating, even though it shows it on the bottom line of the Word window.


But with every occurance of loading an existing Word document, I get a repetitive error that shows the same dialogue 14 times: "A function you are attempting to run contains macros or content that requires macro language support" ... etc.) Most annoying as I have to close this dialogue fourteen times every time I load a Word document. I have only ever run a macro once in Word and that was years ago.



Finally, I also get a dialogue claiming that "this feature appears to be broken ..." (without identifying it) and needs repairing. After "repairing" Word from the Control Panel there was no difference.



Screenshots of two error dialogues are attached.


My only thought is that I may have switched the computer off prematurely before departing a week ago, which may have affected the files being auto-uploaded to my cloud server (pCloud). Otherwise, there was a Windows update when the system was restarted.


Any help would be much appreciated!




Thanks,
David

Attached Images

	Word problem.jpg (25.1 KB, 16 views)
	Word problem2.png (11.0 KB, 17 views)

An Update:
I tried reinstalling Word, but this had no effect. I then located where I think the dictionary files should be located:
C:\Users\david\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Spelling\ en-GB
There are three files there:
default.acl - 6 bytes
default.dic - 240 bytes
default.exc - 6 bytes
I opened default.dic and this contains just 13 words that I have added, but this is just a fraction of what I have entered over the years.
I really could do with some help as Word is currently ignoring any spelling errors (the wavy red line) so it is hard to spot any typos, etc.
Thanks for reading,
David

Just to compound the problem, I am also getting an error message when first loading Excel - see attached screenshot. On the second reload, it seems fine and the program otherwise appears to operate as it should.
I also tried Powerpoint and this is fine.
As mentioned previously, I have already tried the repair and tried reinstalling the program.

Attached Images

Word & Excel problem.png (12.6 KB, 14 views)

You mentioned trying reinstalling the program. Do you have administrative rights on your computer? I'm not sure but that might have hampered the install if you don't.

Did you try running the Repair feature? I'm on a different version so I am not sure exactly what that looks like, but go to Control Panel, Programs, Programs and Features. When you find your Office programs (in my 365 it's "Microsoft 365 apps for business - en-us") instead of uninstall you'd choose Change, and it gives you the option of Quick Repair or Online Repair. I generally try Quick first, then if it doesn't address the problem, I try the other one.

However, I haven't had your problem, but a couple of times upon an Office update, I've lost all of my pinned files in both Word and Excel and all my document history got wiped clean. Which is slightly annoying but not as disruptive as losing your dictionary. I have a bunch of industry-specific words saved in mine, and when I got a new computer a year ago, the dictionary was the one thing I hadn't copied over. It took a while to get most of the place names and soil types saved again.

@kilroyscarnival

Thanks for your input. I did try the Repair function, but it did nt correct the problem. In fact, I have now managed to reinstall the Office Suite and I appear to be back on track.
The dictionary that went missing is the generic one (UK) that's installed with Word. My custom dic., like yours, contains hundreds of technical terms (mainly for glassmaking) and this seems unaffected.
Pinned docs all look fine.
Thanks again,
David

Hmm. Sorry you lost all that.

I'm looking at my own files, and I didn't see anything under Spelling or UProof that looked like it contained my custom words.

Mine seem to be under c:\Users\[me]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Office\16.0\ - there are two randomly named subfolders there and in each is a file called RoamingCustom.txt. By looking at the words, it appears to be a shared dictionary between Word docs, possibly Excel and probably Outlook, since I see some surnames there who are probably only people I've Emailed and not written about in Word.

I did not end up losing anything - the fresh install reinstalled the standard Word dictionary. My custom dic. was never affected
- but I believe it is called custom.dic by default:


File > Options > Proofing > Custom Dictionaries...
then highlight the dictionary file and click 'Edit Word List', which should reveal all your custom words.


I hope that helps.
David

Attached Images

Word problem5.png (66.9 KB, 7 views)

That's great that you didn't lose it!

Are you still getting the error messages?