Why does MS Word 2003 crash after bullet insertion?

After using MS Word 2003 for years, a new problem has suddenly arisen. When I insert bullets into a document, MS Word crashes, asks to send an error message, and then recovers the document. This has never happened to me before, but now it happens most (but not quite all) of the time.

The conditions under which the problem occurs seem to vary. If I insert bullets immediately after starting a new document, then the crash always occurs. If I type a few characters first, then the problem sometimes occurs but sometimes it works OK.

Furthermore, this problem only occurs with ONE user on ONE PC. Others users on the same PC are OK. Other users on other PC’s are also OK.

After searching the internet, this problem seems to be quite common since there is a lot of comment about it. However, I found no comprehensive solution or explanation of the problem. Several solutions were suggested but none of them seemed to help in my situation. Here is what I tried:

1. Deleting all the Normal.dot files - this didn’t help.

2. Delete HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\List Gallery Presets/.
I searched the Registry with REGEDIT but this key was not found.

3. Delete and reinstall printer driver (I have no idea why this would help.)
I updated the printer driver from the manufacturer’s website, but the problem still remained (the printer is a HP PSC 1350 All in one)

Does anyone else have any suggestions, or know of a comprehensive solution? And why would this problem suddenly start to occur when things have been OK in the past?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

 

Possible solution

Hi

I experienced the same problem (again, after no trouble until a recent update).

I was able to cause the crashing to stop by selecting a bullet style from the Bullets and Numbering modal dialog rather than by clicking the toolbar button or using auto-format (typing an asterisk at the beginning of the line).

Once I'd successfully selected the bullet style once from the dialog, both the toolbar button and the auto-format worked without crashing Word.

Super annoying.

Good luck
Bongo

 

If you would post the crash info, that may help.

App:
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