Hi ?B?c2FmZXR5dmFsdmU=?=,

Thanks for your response, Cindy. I use Word 2000. I tried your first
suggestion and I can definitely now work with the document, however as this
file is part of a book and now in a different file format, what now?

You can know save it again as a real Word document. Round-tripping over HTML
has managed to get rid of the "junk" in the file's internal structures.

Also, can anyone explain 'pagination' and why my computer wants to indulge
in a drawn-out 'repagination' process to me? Is it something to do with RAM?

Pagination is the process of laying out the text on the page, with the
resulting line and automatic page breaks. Every time you edit the text, Word
is doing this in the background. Normally, unless a document is very large,
has lots of graphics, newspaper columns or tables, we don't notice it. But
even then it takes a finite amount of time.

But when the document's internal structures get mixed up, Word can't read them
correctly. It will try to lay out the document but can't resolve all the
instructions... and never finishes.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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