I'm working on a book. Not the one I've posted about on the Dope a zillion times--an entirely different one, already sold. The manuscript's about 220 pages & 75,000 words long, and divided into 16 chapters.
Per my editor's request I decide to change the way a minor character in the novel is referred to. For the sake of argument, let's say he was called Shipmaster and I want to call him Captain instead. Every time I do a global search & replace for those terms, the search hangs and the document gets frozen, forcing me to task manager my way out. I open the document again and try to do the search manually--that is, I have Word query me each time it gets to Shipmaster for an approval. It works for until it gets to chapter 5, at which point the search hangs and the program crashes again. I decide to simply search for shipmaster without enabling the replace function, instead typing in captain each time; the same thing happens. I try beginning the search from end of the document & going backwards; the same thing happens. Eventually I cut the document into 3 pieces--saving chapters 1-4 in one file, 5 in a file by itself, and 6 through 16 in a third file; at last I'm able to make it work, and then I reassemble the document.
Out of curiosity I did a search & replace on the main character and love interest, changing Richie to Fonzie and Joanie to Chachi. The names appear much more often than shipmaster did, but there was no such problem. I went back to the orginal document and tried to search & replace on master by itself; it hung up on chapter 5 again, the first time that master appeared by itself in the story.
Has anybody ever had anything like this happen before? Can anybody explain it?