Please check the following list of activation-related issues for common solutions.


Open and Repair

  1. Open Word. Click File → Open but do not yet open the document.
  2. Navigate to the file on your computer. Click just once on the file to select it (but not open it yet).
  3. Immediately to the right of the Open button at the bottom of the page, there is an arrow to open a drop-down menu. Click this arrow on the Open button and select Open and Repair from the drop-down menu. Word will open and repair your document, including any styles that have become corrupt.
  4. For particularly difficult documents, click File → Save immediately after using Open and Repair. Quit Word, and then reopen your document. In some cases, quitting Word performs some additional "repair" to Word files.

At this point, you should be able to run eXtyles on this document as usual, but contact [email protected] if you are still running into problems.

Paste all but the last paragraph mark into a new Word document


Select the entire document except the last paragraph mark, copy the selected text, and paste it into a new document. Save and activate the new document.


You may find you need to add a new blank paragraph to the end of the original document first, and then copy all but that last new blank paragraph into a new document.


This approach has been reported to be successful when problems have been encountered on attempting to activate Word files that have been obtained by saving as Word from a PDF.


Save as rich text format (RTF)


Save the document as a rich text format (.rtf) file. Quit Word. Reload the .rtf version, save it as a Word document (.doc or .docx), and then try to activate it again.


Save as Google Docs format and back to Word


Some Word document corruption can be "flushed out" by uploading the document to Google Docs and then downloading the file again in Word format. This is a more severe treatment than the previous suggestions, as some Word formatting is not supported in Google Docs and may be lost, but it has been found to work when other options have failed.


Again, you will need to delete any baseline files that were created during previous activation attempts before attempting to activate the new Word file.


Convert Word fields to plain text


Select the entire document. Hold the Control and Shift keys and press F9 while holding down the Control and Shift keys. This step will cause all Words fields to be converted to plain text. Because some third-party applications occasionally have corrupt fields (especially some of the third-party reference managers), this solution can help.


Delete the page number from the page footer


For files that return the warning “Word has created incorrect RTF with more open ({) braces than closed (}) braces,” the problem can often be traced to the page footer. Delete the page number from the footer, delete the baseline files that was generated during the first (incomplete) activation pass, and attempt to activate the document.


Improve speed of activation of Word files with large embedded graphics


Microsoft Knowledge Base article 24663 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/224663) describes how you can set a registry key to turn off the extreme file size bloat that occurs when Word documents with graphics are saved to RTF.


Because eXtyles processing converts files from DOC to RTF and back, this setting will eliminate long hold times on Font Audit and Activation in Word files with embedded images. Inera strongly recommends it for eXtyles users who retain graphics in Word documents.


Additional help from Microsoft on troubleshooting damaged Word documents can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=826864.