Bug Report: MS Office Addin Causes Word to Crash

[mCHSNUg5Pz8cPap]

I regularly use the MS Office Addin to create PDF files. Recently, and especially since the release of Version 10.2, the addin has caused Word to hand and then completely crash. However, it will sometimes work (about 25% of the time). Here is how I can reproduce the problem most of the time:
1. Open Word
2. Open a blank document
3. Go to the PDF-XChange tab in the ribbon and press the button "Convert to PDF" (leave all settings at default).

4. Word hangs and will no longer respond.
5. Restart word down by clicking the X in the upper right hand corner

6. Word restarts and asks if I want to disable the addin.

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Note: If Word did not hang at step 4, then close the document, open a new blank document, and repeat the steps. The addin works about 25% of the time for me and causes Word to hang about 75% of the time.

I am using PDF-XChange 10.2.1, 385
I am using MS Word Version 2402 Build 16.0.17328.20004) 64-bit. This is the most current release of the release preview channel of Word.

This bug has made it so I must print Word documents to pdf, which is not very convenient.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello, mCHSNUg5Pz8cPap

I cannot seem to reproduce the issue here, but I am on the latest stable v2401, instead of the v2402 insider preview build. I have forwarded this to our Dev team for further investigation, but at this time I can only suspect that the issue is something introduced by a change in the preview, which will hopefully be resolved by Microsoft before they release that version in full.

In the meantime, Could we ask you to roll back to the latest stable release of Office, and confirm if you see the same issues there?

Kind regards,

[mCHSNUg5Pz8cPap]

MS promoted v2402 to the stable channel. Will you try it on your end and see if you experience the problem? I'm still on 2402 and still experiencing the crash problem. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling PDF-XChange, but that didn't do any good.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello, mCHSNUg5Pz8cPap

After updating and then testing ~20 times in a row without a single failure/error, I am not sure what to say here, as I have not been able to reproduce this issue at all, nor have our developers.
Do note that while the "version" number (2402) may be the same, the actual "Build" is not the same version as the insider preview you had installed. If you are still using that version, than there have been changes in MS Office between that and the official release, as is the purpose of the insider preview, and those changes could be responsive for the difference we are seeing.

image.png (13.65 KiB) Viewed 1757 times

As such, have you tried reinstalling the MS Office suite to see if that helps? I will have to recommend that you do so now, ensuring not to enable insider preview updates this time. As per usual, do ensure that you restart after uninstalling the old version, before you run the new installer to replace it.

Kind regards,

[mCHSNUg5Pz8cPap]

Although I am on the preview channel, it is currently on the same version as the stable channel—i.e., build 20142:

image.png (5.1 KiB) Viewed 1751 times

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I have gone back through my Windows logs and this is what happened.
10 Jan 2024: I install PDF-XChange Pro 10.2.0.384:

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11 Jan 2024: I tried using the Word add-in to create a PDF file and Word stopped responding. Since that that time, I have tried using the add-in many times, which caused Word to stop responding (not all the time, however; sometimes it does work, but usually fewer than 25% of the time):

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This is what Event Viewer shows for the first crash on 11 Jan 2024:

and

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The above information confirms that the issue began when I updated to 10.2.0.384. Something changed that is causing problems with my setup. I disabled all other COM Add-ins in Word and the problem persisted. Also, while testing things today, my custom settings for the PDF-XChange Add-in were lost again (I posted a separate bug report about losing custom settings but it appears to be related to this issue).

There is another symptom that may help narrow the problem. Word sometimes shows an installed printer named "PDF-XChange Office" (see image below).

In the past, I have tried printing to this printer, but the resulting pdf document has watermarks as if I didn't print it with a valid PDF-XChange license. Here is an example of a document created by printing to the PDF-XChange Office printer.

Document1.pdf

(8.03 KiB) Downloaded 7 times

The weird thing is that somehow the PDF-XChange Office printer gets set as the default printer. If I don't change it to PDF-XChange Standard, then it prints pdf documents with watermarks.

Also, the PDF-XChange Office printer only appears some of the time. It is not always there. However, it seems to appear most often after a print job hangs when using the PDF-XChange Add-in.
Here is a screenshot of the diagnostic data from Windows showing the difference when the PDF-XChange add-in works and when it doesn't. The events labeled "Worked" are those created when the add-in successfully creates a pdf document. The event labeled "did not work" is the only event that was created when the add-in did not successfully create a pdf document.

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It appears that the PDF-XChange add-in does three things when creating a pdf document:
1. It installs a printer (likely the PDF-XChange Office printer mentioned above).
2. Spools the job to the printer.
3. Removes the printer.

For whatever reason, the job is sometimes not spooled to the printer, causing Word to hang. I force close Word and reopen it. The printer labeled "PDF-XChange Office" is still present because the previous job did not finish.

I don't know what is causing the job to hang, but I did notice that Windows Event Viewer provides this description:

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Any further ideas about how to handle this would be appreciated.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello mCHSNUg5Pz8cPap,

Many thanks for the detailed report and all the screenshots of the messages you got!

However you seem to mention that you are still with build 384. Can you please update to 385, and let us know if you can still reproduce the problem with the current latest one before we ask our devs to take a look at this case for you?

Yes - a PDF-XChange Printer is installed, and instances of it are created when you want to convert an Office document to PDF through the add in (and then removed if all goes smoothly). So that is expected.


Kind regards,
Stefan

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello, again

After a discussion with the Dev team, they are asking if you could provide us with a crash dump from MS Word when this issue occurs. It should contain some information about the addin which could help us identify what is unique to your system that is not happening here. Alternatively, Ivan is willing to perform a remote session, if gathering that dump file proves too difficult.

To setup crash dumps for MS Word, follow the "hands on" steps in this article, but ensure you use the name of your MS word executable instead of PDFXEdit.exe as the article stated: https://www.pdf-xchange.com/knowledgeba ... -on-method

Since the file will likely be too large to email or post on the forums, you can upload that file to this link (upload link will expire in 1 week, post here again if you need more time): https://files.tracker-software.support/ ... yWWwar2Dbt
(and of course, please do let me know when the file is uploaded, so we can get to work on it right away)

Kind regards,

[mCHSNUg5Pz8cPap]

EDIT: I figured out a way to get a dump file using Task Manager. I waited until Word crashed but just before it restarted (at the screen where Word displayed the option to restart the program, close the program, etc.) and saved a dump file. I uploaded it using the link you provided.
 
ORIGINAL: Daniel, thanks for getting back to me. I am currently on version 385 and have been since shortly after it was released.

I tried the "hands on" method you linked to but it didn't work. The page describing the "hands on" method links to this Microsoft page:L https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/wer/collecting-user-mode-dumps
It says:

Applications that do their own custom crash reporting, including .NET applications, are not supported by this feature.

It seems Word falls under this, which means the "hands on" method won't work for it.

I found the following files in the Windows Error Reporting Archive:

Word WER Files.zip

(3.73 MiB) Downloaded 6 times

However, I'm not sure if they will be helpful.

I'm happy to have Ivan remote in and take a look at things if that helps.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello, mCHSNUg5Pz8cPap

Thank you for passing that along, I sent it up the chain to Ivan and am just waiting on his reply investigating the dump you were able to grab. I am not sure if the process dump will help, but we shall see. If not I will reach out to you by email, probably tomorrow, to plan a remote connection.

Kind regards,

[mCHSNUg5Pz8cPap]

Hello, mCHSNUg5Pz8cPap

Thank you for passing that along, I sent it up the chain to Ivan and am just waiting on his reply investigating the dump you were able to grab. I am not sure if the process dump will help, but we shall see. If not I will reach out to you by email, probably tomorrow, to plan a remote connection.

Kind regards,

Okay, that works. Thanks.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello, mCHSNUg5Pz8cPap

Just wanted to let you know, Ivans investigation seems to have been fruitful, and we have sent you a dll directly aimed to mitigate this issue by email. Please follow the steps there, and let us know if it helps!

Kind regards,

[mCHSNUg5Pz8cPap]

I replaced the dll with the one you sent and everything seems to be working. I could not replicate the crash.

Thanks!

[mCHSNUg5Pz8cPap]

One more thing to note is that I think the replacement dll also seems to have fixed an issue I have not reported in the past because it was somewhat minor. The issue being that when using the Word add-in the "save as" window would appear behind my other windows. Because the "save as" window was not visible, it seemed as though the pdf creation process failed. I learned to check for the "save as" window behind the other windows.

With the replacement dll, the "save as" window seems to always open in front of the other windows.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hello, mCHSNUg5Pz8cPap

I expect that last one may be a change in your usage behaviour while testing. The Standard printer always has and always does request to place its save window on top and in focus, however, modern windows has a background system for determining if you are "actively using" another window, and will prevent such requests from going into effect in such cases. What most commonly happens is something like:
1. begin print/convert
2. accidentally double click the button
3. Windows registers the second click on MS Word, flagging it as "actively in use" for the next few seconds
4. our save as dialog opens only 2 seconds later
5. Windows denies our "make focus" request because of point 3.
You can see the same happen with installers these days when even the windows UAC prompt can be pushed aside because windows thinks you are using something else at that moment. The only way to prevent windows from doing this is to change our dialogs to be "always on top" which would be a tad too intrusive, and so we have not pursued that option.

Kind regards,

[mCHSNUg5Pz8cPap]

In my case, I have a 40" monitor covered with open windows (thanks to Power Toys Fancy Zones). Word is only one of the windows and only takes up at most 1/3 of the screen. However, the "save as" dialog ends up behind all the windows. It was not happening all the time, more like 50% of the time. Either way, it seems to work much better now.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]