Comparing multiple docx files with MS Word Documents Extended Winword.exe won't close

[LCharbonneau]

Hi

I'm using a folder compare in Beyond Compare 4.2.4 (build 22795) - 64-bit for folders containing about 500 .docx file the Helper script DOC_to_TXT.vbs is used in the rule and it seems that the winword.exe application doesn't get closed properly. I end up with hundreds of winword.exe processes, which ends up taking up all my ram (16Gb) and page file (System managed, I've seen it go up to 40 Gb+) and they end up crashing the whole computer. It takes about 80 Mb per process...

The rules came from the "Additional File Formats for BC4" section of the site :
Microsoft Word documents extended
8-Jan-2013
*.doc, *.docm, *.docx, *.dot, *.dotm, *.dotx

Is this an issue you're aware of, is there any possible fix or workaround?

It looks as if the winword application doesn't get closed until all files have been compared, if I try to close BC4 and abort the comparison the winword application will stay hung and will not close at all, I end up having to kill them manually (taskkill /f /im winword.exe)

I'm using word 2016 (16.0.4654.1000) 32-bit

I've also noticed the same issue with xls files, except that we have less xls files to compare so the impact is less severe.

Thank you

[Aaron]

Hello,

We're not seeing this behavior in office, but we're also working with smaller sample sets. Do you see similar behavior if you cut down your test cast to a couple dozen Word or Excel files?

Would one of your files have any odd macros in them that might cause the process to hang around? Or perhaps your antivirus might be scanning; if you temporarily disable it and repeat a test, does the same behavior occur?

[LCharbonneau]

We don't use any macros in these files, lowering the sample size to 20 files on each side still exhibits the issue. The winword.exe processes all stay open for a while even once the comparison has finished running, it takes about 4 or 5 minutes before they close on their own. Note that I'm using rule based comparisons, on files that usually have the same size and content (for most files) but different time stamps. If I use the same files on both sides the comparison seems to be done in binary mode and the vbs script doesn't appear to be called at all in those cases

[LCharbonneau]

Is there any way I could send a small sample of files in a private manner (not publicly posted on the forums so you could have a look?) I have a feeling the content of the files might have an impact, I tried to create a new set of files with simple unformated text in them but comparison is much faster and it doesn't reproduce the issue, I have a small sample set 5 docx files (x2) that does reproduce the issue that might do so on your side as well (336 Kb once zipped), with those files it still take about 25 seconds for the 10 winword.exe process that are spawned to close AFTER the comparison is complete, and if they are copied a few times the time increases exponentially. Thank you

[Chris]

Please email the example files to [email protected] and include a link to this forum thread. Also, please include your Beyond Compare settings. To save your settings to a file, open Help > Support and click the Export button.