Macros stop working after forced break

Dear @Matthew Williams, 

Welcome to the Q&A Community. Thank you for sharing your concerns. 

To help me better understand the situation and assist you effectively, could you please share a few details such as:   

1. Could you please confirm whether your account is a Business/Education (This is an organizational account provided by a company or educational institution) or a Personal account?   
2. If your account is a Business or Education account, are you the account administrator?   
3. Have you updated your Word and Windows to the latest version? 

This will help us better understand the context and provide more targeted support. Any additional information will help us better understand and support you.    

In the meantime, here are a few workarounds you can try: 

After forcibly stopping a macro in Word, you may encounter the error “Code execution has been interrupted”, and macros may stop working until you restart Windows. This can happen even with a clean Normal.dotm template and simple macros. Common causes include: 

• A corrupted global template (Normal.dotm) 
• An unstable VBA environment after forced interruption 
• Add-ins or registry keys interfering with macro execution 

1/ You may try repair office installation 

Sometimes the macro environment becomes unstable due to corrupted Office components. 

Go to Start > Settings > Apps > Installed Apps. 

Select Microsoft 365 or Word, then click Modify. 

Choose Online Repair for a full repair. 

You may find this article helpful for further details: Repair an Office application - Microsoft Support 

2/ You can also reset Word’s registry keys:  

Corrupted registry keys can prevent macros from running properly. 

Press Windows + R, type regedit, and press Enter. 

Navigate to: 

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office<version>\Word\Data 

Export the key as a backup, then delete it. 

Restart Word to allow it to regenerate the key. 

This article provides further guidance on the topic: How to troubleshoot problems that occur when you start or use Word - Microsoft Support 

3/ To test if add-ins are causing the issue, try launching Word in clean mode: 

Press Windows + R, then type: 

winword /a 

This will start Word without loading add-ins or templates. If macros work in this mode, the issue is likely related to an add-in or template.  

You can try these workarounds and update us. Please understand that our initial response may not always resolve the issue immediately. However, with your help and more detailed information, we can work together to find a solution.     

If you need any further assistance or clarification, feel free to reach out. We're here to help. Thank you very much for your understanding and your cooperation.    

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