Hi Elise, I've had that sort of problem quite a lot when I've been writing vba code that looked at and did things with itself. I tried once to build a vba routine to sort procedures alphabetically. When the code went to move the code that was being executed word just gave up and crashed. Then when I went to restart it it wouldn't start. Ctrl Alt Del showed that the machine still thought word was running. I did the same as you and stopped the "ghost" process and I could work again. Regards Lisa ************************************************************* You are receiving this mail because you subscribed to mso@xxxxxxxxxxxxx or MicrosoftOffice@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To send mail to the group, simply address it to mso@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To Unsubscribe from this group, send an email to mso-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word "unsubscribe" (without the quotes) in the subject line. Or, visit the group's homepage and use the dropdown menu. This will also allow you to change your email settings to digest or vacation (no mail). //www.freelists.org/webpage/mso To be able to use the files section for sharing files with the group, send a request to mso-moderators@xxxxxxxxxxxxx and you will be sent an invitation with instructions. Once you are a member of the files group, you can go here to upload/download files: http://www.smartgroups.com/vault/msofiles *************************************************************