thanks for all of your inputs. The odd thing is, in the past I've had the same problem on another HP as well that has all the same software. right now that older PC is working okay in word.

on my new HP PC:These things have not worked, combined with rebooting a lot: I created another new profile, used a different microphone, tried a mouse instead of tracking pad, plugged headset into a different port, renamed word normal template (by the way, when I tried to rename it normal.dotm.old as suggested, I got a pop up you can't change the extension so I simply renamed it normalold.dotm).

Microsoft's solution was: upgrading to Business Standard remains the strongest option to resolve the issue of Microsoft Word freezing and closing out on it's own.


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