Resolved Office 2007 slowly dying?

Hi. I am still running MS Office 2007, and have been very satisfied with it and see no need to go to the expense of an upgrade. But recently Word has started to crash, in the sense that it won't open. I get the splash screen, but it goes no further. If I click in the splash image long enough, I get cute messages like "Word is trying to save your information" or "This might take some time ", etc., but no success. There was no obvious trigger to this, like installation of some new app - it just started happening out of the blue.

I've run Office Diagnostics from the Help menu, and the Repair option from the original installation CD. I've run 2 full scans with Defender. Sometimes I can use Word normally from the Admin account, but not from my normal account. Then the rot started to spread, still within Office: once it was Excel, which crashed when I tried to copy and paste a cell. Next came Outlook, which crashed when I tried to send an email.

If the recommendation is to reinstall Office, I'm happy to do that, but am scared of losing years of emails and contacts - which files (.pst? .ost? others?) should I save before reinstalling? Or is there something else I can try first?

 

g. watson,

If you want to reinstall Office, then I recommend that you make a backup copy of your .pst file. That can be found by opening Outlook and clicking on File > Data File Management > Data Files tab > click on Open Folder, and save a copy of the .pst file to a safe place.

I'm not familiar with an .ost file. I have reinstalled Office 2003 and 2007 several times, and the .pst file is all I have ever dealt with.

Make note of the location of your .pst file before saving it to another location. You can copy and paste it back to that same location after the reinstall if needed.

 

Great, James - thanks. Yes, I found it (or rather, them) following your instructions. Just one question: I thought I remembered an .ost file, too, but from years back - maybe that was an earlier edition of Outlook. Does the .pst file contain everything - mail, calendar, contacts - or is there any other archive-type file I'll need to back up, too?

But I'll leave the thread active in case someone comes up with something less intrusive I could try first. I'm not looking forward to reinstalling all of Outlook and then having to recreate all the personal settings and choices I've honed over the past decade...

 

Thanks Pete - that addresses exactly my concern.

 

I know you can export mail rules (Tools > Rules & Alerts > Email Rules tab > Options), but Outlook 2007 does not include a settings export / import function that I am aware of.

I recommend taking a few snapshots with the PrtScn key of your current Outlook setup, and use those images as a guide to recreate your settings. I do this quite often before I reinstall an operating system, etc. (PrtScn > open MS Paint and paste the image, rename it, and save it as a jpg in a special folder)

It wouldn't hurt to take some snapshots of your email account settings as well. Setting up email accounts in Outlook can pain at times - depending on your ISP.

EDIT: I've never had the problems you're talking about, so hopefully Microsoft is not making Office 2007 die a hard death. Maybe you just need to reinstall Office.

 

According to Outlook, the program will have to closed before you can copy the .pst file.

In that case, you'll find access to it via the Control Panel > Mail (32 bit) > Data Files > Data Files tab > Open Folder...

For what it's worth, you can compact your .pst file to make it smaller (I assume this make Outlook work better, too? - kind of like defragging a harddrive?). The compact function is found at Control Panel > Mail (32 bit) > Data Files > Data Files tab > Settings > Compact now.

 

That's all very helpful indeed - many thanks again. If this problem with crashing Office persists, and nobody has any other suggestions for repair, I'll just have to bite the bullet and reinstall it all as a last resort. I know it's fully compatible with Windows 8, because I've been using it without any problem since buying the new machine back in April or so, up to maybe 3 weeks ago when the crashes started.

James: BTW, under Win8, with [Win key][PrtScn] it saves screen grabs as .pngs in a dedicated folder, in my setup under C:\Users\Me\My pictures\Screenshots.

 

Neat! Hadn't found that one...

 

Thanks, Pete. That's a part of Windows I haven't discovered yet.

I also noticed that the image can be saved as a jpg, too.

 

Run Office Diagnostic program through Start --> All Programs --> Microsoft Office --> Office Tools --> Microsoft Office Diagnostic.

 

OK, I just had to do a total reinstall, which I had been trying to avoid (among other reasons, because I don't know how many more times I can use the product key for totally reasonable and legit reinstallations). That solved it, and there was a lot of useful spinoff info here in the thread, too. Thanks to all for contributions.