Office 2007 troubleshooting tip (Printer Drivers causes MS Office to crash)

This is an interesting issue, as the problem manifested in many forms and no issue seemed to be related to the next. I began to notice issues with some office applications. Here are some examples:

1. I could not paste anything from the clipboard to a new or existing Word or Excel Document.
2. Saving or editing some existing documents would cause a crash and Word/Excel would restart then crash again (looped)
3. I could make minor changes to some existing documents, but inserting anything from the clipboard of any size would cause a crash/loop.

How did I try to fix it?

1. Searched Google, Microsoft data bases tryed different fourms for the error codes generated during the crash and found nothing.
2. I tried the Office repair tool
3. I uninstalled/reinstalled MS Office
4. Deleted the Default Word template.
5. Cleared all caches and clipboard files.

None of this had any effect.

Today, I had a minor epiphany and remembered an issue I resolved few years ago in Office 95 and I tried the fix on this system and the issue got resolved. What was the cause of all my Office 2007 issues.....?????

The PRINTER DRIVER

I uninstalled all printers and deleted residual files in the spooler cache then rebooted my system and the issue was resolved.

Moral of this story: If you have unusual issues with an OFFICE Application, try uninstalling the printer, rebooting and installing the latest printer driver.