[How To] Open ‘Locked’ MS Word Documents

ms-word-locked-documents

JT from Dallas asks “I have a serious problem with my Word documents, they won’t open for me.  A box pops up with ‘there is an error when ‘loading’ this document and then it won’t open.”

This is usually related to a corrupt Normal.dot file.

  1. Find this on your PC and Delete it. (Make a backup first)
  2. Restart the PC and open MS Word.
  3. Word automatically creates a new Normal.dot file and your files should open.

If you can’t find this file, take a look at where it’s on my PC.

Normal.dot file