Word 2003 copy issues

I have Office 2003 Professional and never encountered that with Word.  Before you uninstall/reinstall, try the Detect and Repair procedure (in the Help dropdown menu).

But, it may not be a Word problem, but the clipboard or your interent browser.  Are you using I.E. or some other browser?  If you are not using I.E., try it with I.E. and see if you have the problem.  If it is I.E., update to the latest V8 if you don't have that now.

Hi fireberd,

Thank you for the suggestion. I just used the Detect & Repair feature. We'll see if that takes care of the problem.

I use Firefox rather than IE.

The Clipboard I mentioned is actually a feature of Word. Because I copy the same or similar text a lot, I use the Clipboard so I can have that text available to me in Word.

I will let you know if the Detect/Repair feature worked.

Thanks again!

E

So far, it sounds like the Detect and Repair fixed it and you won't have to completely reinstall office. 

Thanks for the feedback.

Unfortunately, the problem has recurred.

This time, the Office Clipboard did not copy the web page over and over, but it would not let me paste anything into Word other than the image of the web page where I last performed the copy function.

So I guess I am back to square one. If anyone has other suggestions about what may be causing this issue with the Office Word 2003 clipboard, and what to do about it, I would appreciate your feedback.

Thanks.

---An Update:--

I again tried the Repair/Detect function, but the problem recurred with a vengeance when I next restarted Word. When I open Clipboard in Word, and try to copy something (this time a phrase already in my Word doc), Clipboard repeatedly copies a screen shot of the screen wherre the language was. When this happens, I cannot do anything else in the Word doc.

I have looked on Word 2003 Microsoft support site and have not been able to find anything on this. To get help from Microsoft I would have to pay at least $50 for 24-hour email help.

Hi Ron,

Thanks so much for the suggestion. Pardon my ignorance, but what is the Normal.dot file, and why do you believe that deleting it will fix this Clipboard problem I am having?

Many thanks for your time,

Edie

Exit Word and then search the hard drive for normal.dot. Include hidden and system files in your search. Delete all copies of normal.dot that you find. Next time you launch Word, it'll create a new copy of normal.dot. See if that solves the problem.

Of course, if you've made lots of personalized changes to the normal.dot template, they'll all be lost and you'll be back to a generic template which you'll have to customize again.

If you do make lots of personal changes to the normal template, be sure to save an extra copy of normal.dot with a different file name or on external media. I call my backup "normal.new". So when normal.dot gets corrupted again -and it will- I just delete the old version and make a copy of normal.new with the file name normal.dot. Takes a few seconds and I'm back to work.

Hope this helps.

Ron

Normal.dot is the template that contains all the settings used by Word when you open a new (blank) document. It sets the default font, margins, tab spacing, toolbars etc etc. So every blank doc you start opens with exactly the same format.

For whatever reasons, normal.dot gets corrupted fairly frequently (thank you Microsoft!). Though you may not notice obvious signs of corruption when you open a blank doc, strange and mysterious things start to happen and some functions may not work, or not work correctly.  If copy/paste work correctly elsewhere, aside from Word,  that's a reasonable sign that normal.dot is corrupted.

So the first thing to do when Word acts up is to delete normal.dot. I can't promise this will fix your specific problem, but it's a simple and harmless thing to try. The only thing you have to remember is to delete all copies of normal.dot on your hard drive. If Word finds any existing copy (corrupted or not) it will use it and the problem won't go away. If it doesn't find normal.dot, it will automatically create a new copy with all the default settings that are built into Word.

Ron

Hi Ron,

Thanks so much for explaining. Yes, thank you Microsoft, to say it nicely! Can't live with them, can't live without them (unfortunately).

I will definitely try this, and hope that it takes care of both the copying issue, and an issue I have begun having with the spell-checker, where the option to correct a misspelled word is mysteriously grayed out and is therefore unavailable.

Best regards and thanks again,

Edie

Edie,

You're quite welcome. Please post back and let us know if deleting normal.dot fixes the problem.

Ron

Hello Ron and all,

Unfortunately, deleting normal.dot did not work. Nor did uninstalling and reinstalling Office Pro 2003. I tried both, and after a few minutes, the problem with run-amok copying of screen shots in Word recurred.

This is really a pain in the you-know-what! I am trying to post this issue on the Microsoft Discussion Group site, but the question function is not working (if you can believe that). I get a message to "try back later."

Again, any suggestions?

Thanks,

Edie

Hi again,

Thank you for that suggestion, Ron.

Unfortunately, I tried it, and the problem recurred. Now it is doing it ebven when I don't open Clipboard.

I'm starting to feel like my computer is possessed.

I was finally able to post a message on the Microsoft Word Discussion Group, but no one has responded so far.

I really appreciate the response here, and will continue to hope for suggestions that might work.

Many thanks to all,

Edie

Bummer - that would have been too easy... :emotion-3:

Have you scanned for malware lately?

Let's try this:

Open Add/Remove Programs control panel

Click Add/Remove Windows Components button on left edge of the window.

Double-click Accessories and Utilties

Double-click Accessories

Uncheck Clipboard Viewer

Click OK back to the desktop

When it's done, reboot

Now go back to that same screen and re-check Clipboard Viewer

Have your XP CD handy because it may ask for it.

That should remove and reinstall the clipbard viewer and hopefully fix the problem.

Ron

Starting to sound  like malware infection...

Suggest you go to the Malware Removal forum for assistance. Click and read "Please Read This Before Posting For Malware Removal Help" for instructions and then start a new thread. Be sure to mention the symptoms and everything you've tried to fix the problem (eg, Detect/Repair, delete normal.dot, reinstall clipboard viewer, etc).

The experts over there will walk you through various tests to see if your system is infected, and then help you remove anything that turns up. They're very good at what they do, so I'm sure they'll find everything that might be lurking. And when they're sure the system is clean, we can think about other things to try, assuming the cleaned system is still having the problem.

Ron