I just got an error message from Microsoft Word I've never seen before: "Saving the Autorecovery file is postponed for Normal.dot". The choice with the alert is "OK". What demented Microsoft engineer thought that was useful? What half-baked Microsoft product manager wasn't paying attention?
This also reminds me to ask if anyone can explain another issue with Microsoft Word: With Microsoft Outlook running and Word being selected as the editor why does it happen that you can exit Outlook and then when you try to exit Word it asks if you want to change the Normal template when you haven't knowingly changed it? If you click "No" you geta new dialog which asks what you want to save it as and now clicking "Cancel" just takes you back to the previous dialog. And if instead of clicking "No" on that first dialog you click "Cancel" then exiting Word is cancelled and you are back where you started!
This almost always happens when I have to reboot because Windows XP is acting up so badly (Winrot is the problem) that a restart is required. So, I go into Process Explorer (which I use instead of Task Manager) and tell it to restart and walk away to get a cup of tea (or a large glass of wine - usually when Windows XP starts to act up it is late in the day and the wine is excusable). I come back 15 minutes later and the machine is sitting there, waiting, with Windows asking me what to do about the Normal template. At this point I usually have to suppress the desire to put my fist through the monitor. Anyone?
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NORMAL.DOT MAY BE CORRUPTED
The normal.dot file may be corrupted. If that file is corrupted, Word will do strange things, even fail to load. But it is easy to fix. Simply close Word, delete normal.dot, and then restart Word. Word will create a brand-new normal.dot and your troubles are over. Of course, you have to reset your default font settings, etc. that are stored in the template.
In XP, normal.dot is in the user's profile. Look in Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates. Delete the normal.dot and the ~normal.dot template, too. (If you're not sure, rename them "normal.old", in case it doesn't solve the problem and you want to restore them.)
I had a computer where Word would not run. I even re-installed Office and it still would not run. Finally I discovered that normal.dot was about 2 MB in size (that's a clue: it should normally be about 30 KB). I deleted it, and no more problems.