Microsoft Word, coming with a series of edit features, is mainly for writing text, TPS reports and formatting documents efficaciously. No matter you are using previous Word versions of 2016, 2019 or using the new 2020, 2021 even 365 on Mac, it happens that you are just stuck with issues like Microsoft Word not responding, the wheel keeps spinning and you cannot save the work or open to edit a document.
Regardless of the cause for Word not responding, it is very important to save the unsaved work and trouble shoot this in time to avoid further malfunction. Here we will give several ways to get around this Word Not Responding issue, this post also covers a method to recover lost Word documents due to Word not responding.
When your Microsoft Word won’t open or has stopped working on Mac all of a sudden, the possible reasons could be:
If Microsoft Word keeps showing the spinning wheel and you didn’t save the document, there are 3 ways at your disposal to save the unsaved work: Wait for a while, Leave only one document opening, and Force quit & retrieve unsaved work from auto recovery or temporary folder.
Word not responding on Mac may be just because it needs a little more time to load the file and software updates. If you are not in rush, give it more time to respond, then click Save button to save it. I once was able to open and save the work successfully after waiting for approx. 20 minutes when it didn’t respond, I just left it aside and performed other tasks on my Mac.
If your Mac is running our of space and you are opening a large Word document, you’d better open one document per time. If you open multiple Word documents, close others that you don't have to process for now, so your Word application will be under full gear for processing one document at that time. If Word responds later, click Save button to save the unsaved work.
If your Word document continually freezes, hangs or gives you a spinning rainbow ball of death, you need to just shut it down first, then retrieve the unsaved work using Word auto recovery or from temporary folder.
To force quit Microsoft Word application on Mac, we have 4 ways.
Method 1. From Dock
Method 2. Use Finder or Shortcut
Method 3. Use Activity Monitor
Method 4. Use Terminal
Method 1. Use Word Auto-Recovery Feature
By default, the Word AutoRecover feature is enabled to save Word document automatically every 5 or 10 minutes, if you don’t disable this feature, you can save the unsaved work by opening and saving this auto saved file.
Method 2. From Temporary Folder
To avoid any trouble in the future, we should fix Word Not Responding issue. But what to do? Here are 7 fixes you should try.
If your Word won’t open or keeps crashing on Mac, it might be the problems of incompatibility third-party add-ins. Many Add-Ins will not work on Office 64-bit version but on the 32-bit version. To remove add-ins on the Word for Mac, I will show you an example.
Program | Old Add-In File Extension | New Add-In File Extension |
---|---|---|
Word | .dot | .dotm |
Excel | .xla | .xlam |
Powerpoint | .ppa | .ppam |
Safe Mode enables you to safely use Microsoft Word when it has encountered frozen, crashing and not open on Mac.
MS Word not responding on Mac may be caused by the file name which contains invalid characters and symbols.
Office 2011 was rewritten basing on the features of Office 2007 and Office 2010. There are some accidental PC codes in 2011 that don’t permit certain forbidden characters, such as “<>”, “<< >>”, “{}”, “\”, “|”, “/”, superscript/subscript, the number before the name, etc.. So, if your file was created in Word 2016, 2019, or other versions, it won’t open in Microsoft 2011, unless you remove the invalid characters from Word file name.
You can troubleshoot various components of Microsoft Word by resetting or deleting its preference file. Apart from solving the Word not responding on Mac issue, it can also fix Word crashing problem or certain features not working. Resetting preference is not the ultimate solution for all Word problem, thus do not perform this operation too often.
Reinstall the software could be helpful for solving Word not responding Mac issue. But before that, make sure you have completely uninstalled it.
Tips 1. Remove all library files created by Microsoft Word
Check the following directories:
Tips 2. Remove Microsoft Word from the dock
Still nothing? That means your file was permanently lost after Microsoft Word not responding issue. The ultimate rescue, I think, is to install a powerful data recovery program.
Cisdem Data Recovery for Mac is a superb file undelete program. It goes further than others in restoring data from all kinds of devices, ranging from digital cameras to hard disks. Besides Word documents, it also recovers any file types, like videos, audios, photos, emails and so on. Meanwhile, this software works for different file lost situations: not responding, formatted, virus attacked, accidental deletion, system crashed, damaged videos, etc.
That’s all for fixing Microsoft Word not responding, we still have chances to save the unsaved work or recover lost word document caused by this issue. The most important thing we should do after running into Word Not Responding error is to fix it, we list 7 fixes as above. To avoid unsaved work, my advice would be to turn on AutoRecover feature and always backup your Word file regularly.
Peter has always had great enthusiasm for writing, programming and web development. He likes writing about software and technology, his works are featured on some tech blogs or forums like Tom's Hardware, CNET, etc.