Yesterday My Microsoft word program stopped letting me copy and paste

[Liberti]

Hello I am new just registered and very frustrated. I use Microsoft word 97 and and am a writer so do a lot of copy and paste. Up until yesterday it worked just fine then when tried to copy and paste anything it won't paste. I can copy but it won't paste anything

I have no idea why my husband is having the same issue. I have a Gateway computer about 5 years old and I think 64 bit. Not that computer Savvy though. Hubby better but at work. I vitally need the copy and paste to work as working on a manuscript.

We use Mozilla Firefox browser 44.0.1 version not sure what is wrong. Had to reboot computer yesterday and after that it stopped working for copy and paste. We also need it as husband is a pastor. HELP please asap.

 

[Ranger4]

Hi, welcome to the Forum.

Word 97 is an old program & although it does work in Windows 7 there are sometimes problems with it.

Your problem could be caused by the Word Clipboard becoming full & not clearing after pasting. You could try shutting down the computer, wait about 10-15 seconds & then restart the computer, this should clear the clipboard.

 

[GEWB]

Office 97 (Word in particular) was the best version for heavy technical writing, especial for interdocument editing so I understand why you would want to continue using it.

I don't think your problem has anything to do with the clipboard - I base this on your statement "Up until yesterday it worked just fine..."

With the February patch updates Microsoft made a fundamental change to the way DLLs are registered and it has been causing problems with various software packages. There are several threads on SevenForums about this. If your computer ran the February update then you may have been bitten by this issue.

1. First, change the Windows "Important updates" setting to "Never check..." or "Check for update but let me choose..."
2. Next, uninstall the patches KB3126593 and 3126587 then reboot. The reboot may take a while, just let it go.
3. Once back into the Windows OS, run Word and see if the issue is resolved.

If it is resolved, you MUST make additional changes to the Windows Update settings (discussed in length on the forum):

1. Uncheck "Give me recommended updates..."
2. Manually "Check for updates"
3. From the list of recommented updates hide KB3126593 and 3126587

Now you need to change your workflow to manually check for updates on the second Thursday of each month (MS publishes updates the second Tuesday - this gives two days to read SevenForums to see if MS screwed up again and caused major issues).

Let us know if this solves the problem.

Regards,
GEWB
(retired technical writer and business analyst)

 

[MoxieMomma]

Hi:

Word 97 is no longer supported (extended support ended in 2004) and is extremely insecure.

So it might not be a terrific idea to suggest that the OP uninstall 2 recent Windows security patches, especially on a production system which both she and her husband use for their work/business/livelihood?

A safer solution might be to upgrade to a supported version of MS Office, or to switch one of several free, open-source alternatives.

<just a humble suggestion>

MM

 

[halhar]

GEWB,
I did what you said. No change. I am running win 7 Office 2000. There are literally dozens of "this fixed it" out there going back 5 years. Different versions of things, but same observed problem. Widely varying in actions. Including editing the registry. None have worked for me. I have been trying to fix this for many days.

My gut feeling was that it could be related to the last Tuesday update batch. Your post is the first I found that pointed to a MS update. Albeit the previous month. Any idea if they did something for the March patch day? It worked for years, up until last patch day.

Re, use a newer version. I understand the support issue. The next version is I believe that piece of non-intuitive garbage with the anti-human ribbons. Just my opinion, of course, but I really hate the interface. But that is why. Wasn't too keen on Win 8 either. With a third party start menu, you can pretty much pretend the Win 8 interface does not exist. 10 still scares me, but MS seems on a roll to force all of us there.

 

[RolandJS]

If you want to keep Office 97, make your anti-virus, anti-malware, etc. is kept current, updated, and not too assertively set. Also, are you running any kind of privacy and/or antiransom utilities? I doubt any of those would cause problems you posted, however, sometimes those also need to be fine-tuned.

 

[whs]

Try this, go to Word Options and follow my pictures.

 

[halhar]

That yielded 1 result. It said reinstall. I have not been able to find the CD. However I believe I have actually found a solution - Libre.

 

[GEWB]

That yielded 1 result. It said reinstall. I have not been able to find the CD. However I believe I have actually found a solution - Libre.

You might spend another couple hours - again your issue occurred right after a Windows update. Before giving up hope, go into your Windows Update and uninstall ALL updates from January, February and March of this year, then see what happens.

If Word runs as you wish then you must consider keeping the computer off line or at least have serious limitations.

HOWEVER, as a now retired technical writer/technical communications specialist (and business analyst) - don't you just love corporate speak - I can recommend LibreOffice Writer for almost any writing task. In fact it is better than Word for very large documents (many hundreds to thousands of pages). I have used LO to recover corrupted Word docs many times (and looked like a genius). My only issue came with Adobe RoboHelp as it only integrates with MS Word, but even then I had work arounds.

Regards,
GEWB

 

[halhar]

At this point I am probably just going to drop MS Office. The price of Libre is much better and does not have stealth updates to system files or applications nor trying to trick you into changing to an even more alien operating system. We were having a crisis here. My wife needed to finish work for a presentation/lecture she is making this weekend. Neither of us build large documents anymore. We were both technology consultants and did some pretty big files (system design specs, responses to RFPs, etc.). My word processor of choice after it was released was WordPerfect. It did a whole bunch of things right that MS did not. Although someone still sells it, I had mostly dropped off most screens. Yes, started on MSDOS, 64 MB of ram, etc.

Thanks for your help everyone.

 

[GEWB]

While I used WP I got my start with WordStar - even had to write my own printer driver!

LibreOffice will serve you well.

If you really want to make the most of it, load Linux Mint and run LO from there (I like the Cinnamon version of Mint) - very fast compared to running Windows.

Regards,
GEWB

 

[Layback Bear]

This works well for my needs.

They have a free and paid for.

FREE Word Processor Based on Microsoft's WordPad Engine

Exclusive Jarte Plus Features

 

[RolandJS]

I used Libre Office Writer to import old DOS WordPerfect doc-files and reSaved 'em as Office 97-compatible DOC files. Why Office 97 DOC standards? Since I used to pass those files around, I wanted to make sure that almost any and every computer running any form of DOC-reader/writer could read the stuff.