Microsoft KB Archive/170887

= WD97: Field Code Becomes Damaged Under Certain Circumstances =

Article ID: 170887

Article Last Modified on 1/20/2007

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Word 97 Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q170887



SYMPTOMS
When your document contains a damaged field code and you save the document in Rich Text Format (RTF), you may receive the following error message:

This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. If the problem persists, contact the program vendor.

When you click Details, you receive the following message:

WINWORD caused an invalid page fault in module WINWORD.EXE.

Other possible symptoms include:


 * If you click Header and Footer on the View menu, the header and footer panes may not be displayed.
 * Field codes have only one field brace displayed instead of two.
 * If you delete the text in the header or footer, Word may stop responding.



CAUSE
This problem can occur in a variety of situations when manually editing fields in the header including, but not limited to, some of the following actions:


 * On the Standard toolbar, Show/Hide is not selected, that is, nonprinting characters are not displayed.
 * On the View tab in the Options dialog box, the View Field Codes check box is cleared.
 * On the Layout tab in the Page Setup dialog box, the Different First Page check box is cleared.
 * You save, close, and then reopen the file.
 * You press TAB and then press BACKSPACE in the header or footer.



RESOLUTION
To correct this problem, install Microsoft Word 97 Service Release 1 (SR- 1).

To work around this problem, copy everything but the last paragraph to a new document. To do this, follow these steps:


 * 1) Open the document that contains the damaged field code.
 * 2) Press CTRL+END to move the insertion point to the end of the document.
 * 3) Press CTRL+SHIFT+HOME to select all but the last paragraph of the document.
 * 4) On the Edit menu, click Copy.
 * 5) Create a new document.
 * 6) On the Edit menu, click Paste.
 * 7) Re-create the header and footer for the document.



STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Word 97 for Windows. This problem was corrected in Microsoft Word 97 SR-1.

For additional information about SR-1, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

172475 OFF97: How to Obtain and Install MS Office 97 SR-1

