Microsoft Word 2013 Has Stopped Working

If you get the error message Microsoft Word 2013 has stopped working, there are a number of things you can try to sort out the problem. Although by far the most common cause is a dodgy Add-in, you might consider the following:

• there might be a conflict with your NVIDIA driver for your video card. If this is the case, rename your existing driver (NVWGF2UM.DLL) to NVWGF2UM.old. This will keep a copy of your driver in case you need to reinstate it, but it won’t be used because your system is looking for NVWGF2UM.DLL. Note that if you install any future video card driver updates the offending driver will be reinstalled.
• there might be compatibility issues with Add-ins. This happens frequently. To determine whether this is the case, you will have to scrutinise the event log produced. If it indicates that an Add-in is to blame, open Word in safe mode (Press WINDOWS+R keys. and when the ‘Run’ dialog box appears, type ‘WinWord /safe’ without the quotes, then Press ENTER) click the File tab > Options > Add-Ins, and then click on the Go button next to Manage Add-ins and if there is an Add-in matching the suspect, disable it. A number of Word 2013 users have reported problems with the following Add-ins: Read More
  
  • ABBYY FineReader
  • Fun Tools
  • Toshiba Book Reader
  • Acrobat PDFMaker
  Here is an example of an event log:
  

  Faulting application name: WINWORD.EXE, version: 15.0.4454.1504, time stamp: 0x50be98da
  Faulting module name: btmofficea.dll, version: 1.0.0.49, time stamp: 0x4d382a1a
  Exception code: 0xc0000005
  Fault offset: 0x00000000000065ff
  Faulting process id: 0×1318
  Faulting application start time: 0x01ce0ce707fd2419
  Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\WINWORD.EXE
  Faulting module path: c:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\Bluetooth\btmofficea.dll
  Report Id: 487fb2ad-78da-11e2-98a3-005056c00008

  You can see that it is a Bluetooth Add-in that is causing the problem.
• if you are experiencing hardware problems, it’s worth disabling hardware graphics acceleration: click the File tab > Options > Advanced, then in the Display section of the dialog check the box for Disable hardware graphics acceleration. If you don’t see this box, you can set the regkey DisableHardwareAcceleration = 1 in Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\Graphics
• repair Office:
  • Click Start > Control Panel > Programs > Programs and Features.
  • Click the Office program you want to repair, and then click Change.
  • Click either Quick Repair or Online Repair.
• failing the above, you could download and run the Microsoft Fix It program (for Office Word 2007 and later versions).
• if none of the above works, and you feel like being more adventurous, you could try tinkering with your registry settings (see next section).

Tinkering With Your Word 2013 Registry Settings

Beware: modifying your registry incorrectly can cause serious problems. Always back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. How to back up and restore the registry in Windows.

Delete the Word Data registry subkey

Many frequently used options in Word are stored in the Word Data registry subkey. A common troubleshooting step is to delete the Word Data registry subkey. When you restart Word, it rebuilds the Word Data registry key by using the default settings. You can see these options by clicking the Microsoft Office Button, and then click Word Options (but you can’t delete them here). To delete the registry subkey:

1. Exit all Office programs.
2. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. Locate the following registry subkey: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Word\Data
4. Click Data, and then click Export on the File menu.
5. Name the file Wddata.reg, and then save the file to the desktop.
6. On the Edit menu, click Delete, and then click Yes.
7. Exit Registry Editor
8. Restart Word 2013

Note When you delete the Word Data registry subkey, Word resets several options to their default settings. For example, Word resets the “most recently used file” list on the Filemenu. Also, Word resets many settings that you customize in the Options dialog box.
If you think you’ve messed up, you can restore the original Word Data registry key by doing the following:

• Exit all Office programs.
• Double-click the Wddata.reg icon on the desktop.
• Click Yes, and then click OK

Delete the Word Options registry key

The Word Options registry key stores those options that you can set in Word by changing menu options. The settings are divided into default settings and optional settings.
Default settings are created during Setup. You can change the default settings by changing options in Word. Optional settings are not created during Setup.
To delete the Word Options registry key, do the following:

1. Exit all Office programs.
2. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. Locate the following registry subkey: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Word\Options
4. Click Options, and then on the File menu, click Export.
5. Name the file Wdoptn.reg, and then save the file to the desktop.
   On the Edit menu, click Delete, and then click Yes.
6. Exit Registry Editor.
7. Restart Word.

If this does not resolve the problem, restore the original Word Options registry key by doing the following:

1. Exit all Office programs.
2. Double-click the Wdoptn.reg icon on your desktop.
3. Click Yes, and then click OK.