OFF97: Invalid Page Fault in OLE32.DLL Closing Document

• Microsoft Word 97 for Windows
• Microsoft Excel 97 for Windows

WARNING: The information in this article has not been confirmed or tested by Microsoft. Some or all of the information in this article has been taken from unconfirmed customer reports. ANY USE BY YOU OF THE INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THIS ARTICLE IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. Microsoft provides this information "as is" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose

SYMPTOMS

When you close a Microsoft Word document or a Microsoft Excel workbook, you may receive the following error message:

   This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down.
   If the problem persists, contact the program vendor.

   <PROGRAM> caused an invalid page fault in module OLE32.DLL at <address>

CAUSE

This problem may occur if the Office item log file, Offitems.log, is damaged.

WORKAROUND

To troubleshoot this error, attempt to isolate the problem to corruption in the Offitems.log log file, which is located in your Windows folder.

To check for corruption in the log file, follow these steps:

1. Close all programs.

2. Rename the Offitems.log file (to Offitems.old for example).

3. Restart Word or Excel, open a file, make a change to the file, save the file, and then close the file.

4. If the error does not appear, the problem has been isolated.

5. If the error reappears, close Word or Excel.

6. Find the file called OLE2.REG and double-click the file name.

7. Click OK.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article.

MORE INFORMATION

The log file, Offitems.log, stores journal information into Microsoft Outlook on the create, open, close and save events for any file in Office 97. If renaming the log file allows Outlook to start successfully, Outlook regenerates the log files. However, any journal information contained in the original log file will be lost.

The Outlook Journal process automatically records a log of user activities. Each of the Office 97 programs provides AutoJournal capabilities, logging to an Outlook Journal entry each time you open, save, or print a document. With the Journal and the Outlook 97 timeline view, you can find information based on when you worked on a document, and not worry about where you saved it or what you named it. To configure Outlook 97 to use the AutoJournal feature, use the Journal tab on the Options dialog box. With this you can add, remove, and edit the types of AutoJournal entries.

If you turn on Outlook AutoJournal for any of the Office 97 programs, Outlook tries to record activities of the Office program directly to the Outlook Journal. When Outlook is not running, the Office program makes a call to Mso97.dll that causes the journal entry to write to "Offitems.log" in the Windows directory. When Outlook starts, the Journal processes these entries after a Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) idle time of 30 seconds.

For more information on the Journal feature of Outlook, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   Article-ID: Q172002
   Title     : Setting Outlook Journal Registry Entries

   Article-ID: Q167975
   Title     : Office Programs Stop Responding While Outlook is Busy

   Article-ID: Q167975
   Title     : OL97: Office Programs Stop Responding While Outlook Is Busy

   Article-ID: Q166850
   Title     : OL97: Outlook Starts Slowly with AutoJournal Feature