Member Avatar for MpG

A friend of mine has a problem and I don't know what caused it.We scanned some text pages with my scanner and opened them with Word 2003 to see if they are ok.No problem so far.But when he opened them on his laptop (using an older version of office) word gone crazy and started turning off his monitor and everything stopped.He installed office 2003 but the problem persisted and only for the scanned pages...I advised him intall office 2003 service pack 1 but I don't know whether helped or not.

Any suggestions???

:evil:

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A concise diagnostic checklist and safe fixes for the symptom described by , building on the OCR/conversion idea from and the reinstall thought from . The focus is isolation first (is the Office install, the Windows profile, a driver, or the converted file itself?), then non-destructive workarounds that let the document be used without forcing a full reinstall.

Start with isolation steps that do no harm: launch Word in safe mode (winword.exe /safe or hold Ctrl while starting) to bypass add-ins and custom templates; if the file is stable there, disable third-party add-ins and rename the global template (Normal.dot) after backing it up so Word can recreate a clean one. Open the troublesome file in a plain-text viewer or an image viewer to confirm whether it is mostly text or contains embedded OLE/graphics; extracting images and importing them into a fresh document often separates the bad element from the text. Passing the contents through a plain-text intermediary (Notepad) will strip hidden formatting that can trigger odd behaviors.

If the problem looks system-related, check Windows Application and System event logs for errors time-stamped to the crash (search for references to Word, display or printer drivers, or COM objects). Update or roll back the graphics and printer drivers (Word uses the default printer driver for layout); try the document under a clean user profile or on a clean Office install to detect profile or Office configuration corruption. Use Office’s Repair/Change option before a full uninstall/reinstall.

Practical quick workarounds: re-export OCR output as plain text or a stable interchange format on the origin machine and reformat locally; keep backups of templates and originals before changing them. If these steps do not isolate the cause, preserve the event-log entries and a single sample of an offending file for deeper diagnostics.

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Member Avatar for MpG

Well,the service pack didn't help.

Any ideas?????????

Member Avatar for JANINE

they need to install the full version of office 2003 and make the files actual word or text files. also it helps to save the documents as 'all word formats'

Member Avatar for Catweazle

umm.... Janine, that doesn't make sense.


MpG, could you please let us know what make and model of scanner it is, and also what, if any, OCR software is being used with the scanner. When you scan a document the scanner by nature creates an image file, not a document file. You'd normally use a graphics program to view the scanned image. If OCR (Optical character recognition) software is being used to convert the image file to a document file, the source of the problem may lie there.

Member Avatar for MpG

I don't know if this helps but my friend owns a laptop(Acer Aspire 1700).The problem doesn't occur on my desktop PC.The scanner we used is a Compeye Joyscan DP30A 600dpi.It's a bit old.The OCR software is READIRIS 9(I also tried the first vesion of READIRIS but it prooved problematic on his laptop.My opinion is that Laptops sometimes are a bit stubborn..... :evil: Without a reason they stuck and cause sometimes weird problems such as this.

Member Avatar for Catweazle

I think it's a conflict between the software used. The OCR program is apparently not creating files readable by the older version of Word on the laptop, or the newer version of Word is saving the files with formatting code that the older system can't handle. Try saving the files in another format, perhaps rtf or text files, and then open them on the laptop.

Member Avatar for JANINE

exactly what i was trying to say but i couldnt think of the right way to phrase it at the time.

Member Avatar for MpG

The most of the text he needs is rtf format because wordpad doesn't align the bars (like Word)to fit the book width,so we saved them on wordpad and copy-pasted on Word.I don't understand why there may be a conflict between software because Readiris 9 and Word 2003 are the most recent on their series...The same sofware is on my PC and operates correctly.
We tried other format combinations too.It looks like my friends Laptop(or Word) is ...allergic to scanned pages and downloaded ones!!!! :mrgreen:

Member Avatar for JANINE

sounds like u sorted it then

Member Avatar for MpG

Well ,we didn't but I don't think I can do anything further.It looks like an internal problem.Anyway thanks for your help!!!!!!

Member Avatar for JANINE

try uninstalling and reinstalling word, if you havent already.

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