Word 2013 running on windows 8.1 - every time I try to close the application an error box pops up 'word has stopped working', options sometimes include 'close the program', other times only 'restart the program', or 'check online ... and restart', or 'debug'.

This is an irritating waste of time.

Any help much appreciated.

Hi,

Based on your description, could you tell me if this issue happened in particular files or random files? If this issue only happened in Word? Did you test if it also appeared in Excel or any other programs? Have you ever tested if it works fine in safe mode?

First I suggest you open it in safe mode running the following command: Press Win + R, type "winword /safe" in the blank box, press Enter. If it works fine in safe mode, please check the add-ins in your Word and disable them.

Click File > Options > Add-Ins on the left side of the dialog. Then click the drop-down arrow at the bottom of the dialog box and select "COM Add-Ins" from the list, then click the GO button. What comes up is a list of COM-Add Ins that are loaded and running (As shown in the following figure). Try to disable these add-ins one by one check if the issue caused by these add-ins.

If the issue still exists in safe mode, I suggest you to collect the event log and provide us with the whole error messages of event log.

Steps of collecting event log:

Open Event Viewer to check whether there's any error about the Word crash issue.

Press Win + R, type "eventvwr" in the blank box, press Enter. In the Event Viewer, browse to Windows Logs -> Application, there may be some errors after the crash.

Please try to collect this event log and post the whole event log message here. I can get more information about your issue from this message and help you solve it.

Or you can refer to this article, it provided several methods you can try:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/921541

Try these methods and let me know if they work fine. Im glad to help and follow up your reply.

Regards,

George Zhao
TechNet Community Support

Thanks George, 

The cause - an AcerCloud COM Add-In, now removed.

Kind regards.