Microsoft KB Archive/286839

= You receive a &quot;Microsoft Word has encountered a problem and needs to close&quot; error message when you try to start Word 2002 or Word 2003 =

Article ID: 286839

Article Last Modified on 7/27/2006

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Office Word 2003
 * Microsoft Word 2002 Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q286839





For a Microsoft Word 2000 version of this article, see 211541.



For a Microsoft Word 97 version of this article, see 166971.



SYMPTOMS
After a document that is named Normal.dot is placed in the User templates (or Workgroup templates) folder and you try to start Microsoft Word, you may receive the following error message:

Microsoft Word has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

To view the details of the error signature, click the link in the To see what data this error report contains, click here error dialog box. The following error signature appears: AppName      AppVer        ModName       ModVer        Offset

winword.exe  10.0.4009.0   winword.exe   10.0.4009.0   00144ad3

You are prompted to send the error report to Microsoft.

After you click Send Error Report or you click Don't Send, you receive the following message:

Word has detected a problem with the existing normal.dot. Would you like to create a new normal.dot?



CAUSE
This issue may occur if the global template (Normal.dot) is actually a Word document named Normal.dot. When Word tries to use the document as its default global template, you receive the error message that is mentioned in the &quot;Symptoms&quot; section.



RESOLUTION
To resolve this issue, click Yes on the message that follows the error message:

Word has detected a problem with the existing normal.dot. Would you like to create a new normal.dot?

After you do this, a new Normal.dot template file is created and Word starts as expected.



MORE INFORMATION
A Word document (.doc) renamed with a Word template (.dot) extension does not open in Word because template files contain a file format that is different from that of document files.

Additional query words: prb wd2002 wd2003

Keywords: kbtemplate kberrmsg kbpending kbprb KB286839

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