For everyone else, though, you'll need to use Microsoft's automated tool to see whether it can fix the issue or manually try some troubleshooting methods outlined in a support document.

Several troubleshooting steps will be need to perform to fix Microsoft word not responding on Windows. The word processing program Microsoft Word was created by Microsoft.

To resolve the 'Word cannot open the existing file (Normal.dotm)' error, reset the Normal.dotm file, use Open and Repair, and disable add-ins.