I recently ran into an extremely annoying situation on two different computers, and strangely enough, two different operating systems. One was a Windows Vista desktop and the other an Windows 2003 Terminal Server.
Every time I would launch Microsoft Word, it would crash upon exit. I tried a number of recommendations from various tech websites, but nothing did the trick.
Finally I came across the fix, which was to fire up the good old registry editor (start > run > regedit) and delete a specific key in the registry.
The offending key is the DATA key under the following location:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\
The “12.0” will vary depending on what version of Office you have installed. Backup your registry first (anytime you work with the registry, back it up before you do anything….. Just in case..). Super important. Hopefully you never need it, but it can save your rear-end should you ever need to revert back if something goes wrong.
Once you’ve “backed that thang up”, delete the “Data” key and fire Word back up. Once I did that, Word started without a hitch and shutdown without a problem. Hopefully this quick fix helps you as well!
Please leave a comment and let me know how you made out!
June 16th, 2009 at 3:56 am
Excellent fix! I tried repairing my installation but even that didn’t help the problem, so thanks for your help.
August 26th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
I deleted the Data key and the first time I ran Word after it started up and shut down fine. Then I tried opening an existing Word document and on shut down it crashed again just like before. Looking in the registry, the Data key has come back. Boo. Ah, well.
August 26th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
I deleted the Data key and the first time I ran Word after it started up and shut down fine. Then I tried opening an existing Word document and on shut down it crashed again just like before. Looking in the registry, the Data key has come back. Boo. Ah, well.
August 26th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
I deleted the Data key and the first time I ran Word after it started up and shut down fine. Then I tried opening an existing Word document and on shut down it crashed again just like before. Looking in the registry, the Data key has come back. Boo. Ah, well.
August 26th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
I deleted the Data key and the first time I ran Word after it started up and shut down fine. Then I tried opening an existing Word document and on shut down it crashed again just like before. Looking in the registry, the Data key has come back. Boo. Ah, well.
August 26th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
I deleted the Data key and the first time I ran Word after it started up and shut down fine. Then I tried opening an existing Word document and on shut down it crashed again just like before. Looking in the registry, the Data key has come back. Boo. Ah, well.