

Word simply recreates the template the next time it opens, with all settings back to their defaults. My first attempt at a fix was to close Word, and then find and rename the Normal.dotm template (it's called Normal.dot in earlier versions). Unfortunately, it took me the better part of an afternoon to figure out this partial solution, and I'm no closer to finding the source of the crashes, though Vista SP1 is the prime suspect.

I still haven't figured out how to keep Word from crashing on exit, but I regained access to the program's settings by disabling all add-ins. A funny thing happened after I installed Windows Vista Service Pack 1 on my PC: Word 2007 started crashing whenever I closed it, and all but a handful of the application's settings became inaccessible.
