I installed Office on my Windows computer a long time ago and everything worked fine until today. I tried to open a Word document from my desktop and for some strange reason Word opened in Safe Mode. I found it strange, so I turned it off and reopened the file. Safe mode again!
Then I tried to just open Word without clicking on the document, but it still opened in Safe Mode. Now I was really puzzled. After doing a little research, I figured out how to fix the problem so that Word opens in normal mode instead of Safe mode. In this article, I will share a few of the methods I came across and the one that helped me.
Disable the Bluetooth add-on
For some reason, the bluetooth add-on in Word might keep it running in Safe Mode all the time. You can try disabling it and see if that solves the problem. Here’s how. First open Word, and then click File and Options.
In the Options dialog box that appears, click Add-Ins. At the bottom, select COM Add-ins from the drop-down menu and click Go.
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In the list that appears, uncheck the Bluetooth box. Depending on your system, Bluetooth may or may not be listed, but if you have this problem, chances are it is. If not, keep reading for other possible solutions!
Create a new Normal.dotm
If something goes wrong with the global Word template called Normal.dotm, it can cause problems starting everything in Safe Mode. You can rename the Normal.dotm file to something else and when you open Word again, it will recreate the file for you. Here’s how:
Click on “Start” and type “Run”. This will bring up the launch dialog. Then type% appdata% and press Enter.
Then click Microsoft and click Templates. Here you will see a file called Normal. This is what we need to change.
To change the file extension, we need to show the file extensions. You can do this by clicking the “Organize” button, then “Folder and Search Options”.
Then go to the “View” tab and uncheck “Hide extensions for known file types.”
Click OK and now you should be able to see the file extension. Right-click the file and choose Rename. Rename it to Normal.old and then restart Word and see if it opens in Normal or Safe Mode.
Re-register Microsoft Word
You can also try registering Word on Windows again by clicking the Start button, typing Run, and then typing the following command:
WinWord / r
The Microsoft Office Setup dialog box appears, making some customizations for a few minutes and then completing. Hopefully you don’t get any errors, and once that’s done, try starting Word again.
Hopefully one of the above methods will solve your problem with Word opening in Safe Mode or crashing when trying to open. If not, leave a comment and we’ll try to help! Enjoy!
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