Normal.dot or Normal.dotm is the basic template using which all Microsoft Word documents are created. Also known as the global template, it determines layout of the text and font defaults and also the margin defaults. However, you can change these defaults to new ones. The corruption of Normal.dot can damage your Word documents. The documents that have been created using this template show strange characters or give error messages post corruption. In such situations, you need to use a recent up-to-date and valid data backup to restore the lost Word files. But, if the backup is non-existent, corrupt or not up-to-date, the word recovery tools can repair and restore your damaged Word documents.
As a practical instance, when you try to close or save a document in Microsoft Word 2007 or 2003, it gives the below error message:
“Microsoft Visual C ++ Runtime Library Runtime Error
Program: WINWORD.EXE
abnormal program termination”
After clicking OK on this error message dialog box, Word unexpectedly gets closed.
Cause
You encounter the above error message because of any of the following reasons:
• Normal.dot (global template) is damaged or corrupted
• Damaged or corrupted Word add-in
• OfficeAV.dll (Norton Antivirus Office plug-in) is damaged or corrupted
Word add-ins are tools that are used for additional functionality, whereas, OfficeAV.dll is the plug-in that scans Office documents for macro virus infections.
Solution
To solve the above issue, you need to take these steps:
• To correct global template issues, you need to rename it. In Word 2007, the global template is named as Normal.dotm and in Word 2003, it is named as Normal.dot.
• If corrupt Word add-in is the issue, you need to remove it. For this, you should delete the registry settings that point to these add-ins.
• You should update Norton Antivirus Office plug-in using the Live Update feature in Norton
• To repair documents corrupted due to Normal.dot damage, you need to scan them using Word Repair applications. These are specially designed tools that use powerful scanning mechanisms to safely repair and restore the damaged Word documents. These Word Recovery software provide user-friendly and self-descriptive interface.
Stellar Phoenix Word Recovery is the most advanced doc repair tool to scan and repair the damaged or corrupted Microsoft Word documents. It can repair all document objects like tables, hyperlinks, images, charts, drawings etc using powerful scanning algorithms. The software supports Word 2007, 2003, 2002 (XP) and 2000. It is compatible with Windows Vista, XP, 2003, 2000 and NT.
