I have been fighting the same frustrating quirk with my Microsoft Word (Office 365 on Windows 11) for several weeks.
When I am working on any document and go to a simple function like Change Margin or Print, Word freezes instantly, and a “not responding” message appears in the top left corner (I’ll include a screenshot). I then have to use Task Manager to close Word. When I go back in, I have the same problem.
I have uninstalled and reinstalled Office three times, done all the updates I can, and tried a few things MS Tech Support suggested, but nothing helps.


Today I tried running Word in Safe mode, with the same result. I also ran a Repair in Control Panel, and it looked like it did a complete reinstall. Nothing changed.
Has anyone had any kind of similar problem, or does anyone know of someone who might know of anything else to try?

Attached Images

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I would guess that your document has picked up a corruption in one of the sections which is causing a crash when you ask for pagination to occur. To fix this, I would
1. Take a copy of the file, run a search and replace to remove any existing section breaks. This is a Find/Replace where you find "^b" and replace it with "^p".
2. Then Select All except the last return in the document and paste that content into a new document.
3. Save this new document and see if the corruption is still present.

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

I appreciate the suggestion. Unfortunately, that wasn't the problem. My fight continues

OK, sounds like a particular corruption that you now need to isolate. How I would locate this is trial and error.

With a copy of the document, delete the back half of the document and see if the crash happens.

If the crash still happens then you know the problem exists in the remaining part of the file. So delete the back half of that remaining content and try again. If the crash DOESN'T happen then the corruption must be somewhere in the deleted content so undo the deletion and delete smaller parts in a systematic way, testing as you go.

Keep removing content until you reach a point where the crash doesn't occur. Make note of the part of the document which can be removed to avoid the crash occurring.

By progressively removing half of the document at a time you can fairly quickly arrive at a particular page or paragraph which causes the crash. You should then be able to CUT that content and PASTE AS TEXT ONLY to remove the hidden corruption. Do some more testing and if you are back in action, restyle that content and carry on.

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

Thanks for reaching out. It seems like I am not explaining the problem fully. Word freezes and shows the "not responding" error no matter what kind of document I try to print, as well as when I try a basic function, like click "Custom Margin" in "Layout"

Ahh, no. I didn't pay enough attention to your original post. You did say 'any document' and I missed that. Sorry

OK, the problem most likely lies in your addins. I would have expected Safe Mode to block that but maybe not. Your screen shot shows you have a ribbon Tab for ProWritingAid - if that was disabled, does the problem still exist? If you show your Developer Tab, you can use the buttons there to disable any active addins and see if there is one in particular that causes the crash.

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

I completely uninstalled ProWriting Aid and the problems resolved. I am a little bummed, because it has been the best grammar checker and writing assistant I've found. I've used it for over a year without any problems, so I am puzzled what made the difference a couple of months ago. They have a tech team, so I guess I will reach out to them.
Thanks for the suggestion!

It is possible that the addin is fine by itself and is now broken because something else is also running. It is also possible that you have done a M365 update that broke it.

In any case, you should reach out to the ProWritingAid tech support and work with them to arrive at a solution. If you paid for it, it is reasonable to expect it to work.

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia