Breaking News – How to Break Microsoft Word 2000!

Ever tried to test Microsoft Word? Ever tried to break it or crash it! When I ask this, I am not talking about testers who work for Microsoft and might have had a chance to test it for Microsoft. Well, I have tested it before and there were times when I had found some minor glitches in the application. But I was never able to crash it or break it.

But this time around, I think I could crash (break!) it! So often we hear that "A tester should have a test to break attitude!" But I don't completely agree to this statement. Testers don't break software. In fact, the software is already broken (by the programmer!). Testers just find the place where it is broken and report it.

However, I got this test idea while I was testing an application from the suite of tools, which I test in my workplace! I got a crash there in that application while using this test idea. As that application is very much similar to Microsoft Word, I thought of testing Word with similar test ideas and see the result. While testing, I got at least 3 weird behaviours and a crash in Microsoft Word. I will try to document my findings (test results) in the paragraphs that follow.

Testing Mission: To try and crash (break!) Microsoft Word 2000, by using the following test ideas.

Procedures I followed while Testing:

A) Test Steps – I opened MS Word 2000. Then keyed in some text (my test data was: “This is a test.” You may use your own test data). I kept entering the text until the first line was about to get filled up! Then I tried to enter some spaces by using the spacebar. In fact, I held down the spacebar. Hey wait a minute! Where this freaky cursor is going?

Actual Result – The cursor went into the right-side margin area! Here is a screenshot of the weird behavior!

B) Test Steps – My first test observation gave me another test idea. This time, I typed 2 letters (A and Z) separated by a space. And tried to fill the in between space with lots of spaces. To do this, first I entered some spaces manually through spacebar. Then I copied the spaces and kept on pasting it over and over again (using Ctrl+V). While doing so the letter on the right side of the spaces (here ‘Z’) kept moving towards right until it reached the line end. Then it was pushed to the next line. But interestingly, after that it never moved to the right even if I continued entering more spaces. Still I am wondering where those spaces were going after being pasted! As the numbers of characters in the text were virtually not growing anymore (even if I was trying to paste more spaces in between), so I wanted to check the total word and character counts. So I manually copied the whole text (using mouse click-and-drag facility) and used MS Word’s inbuilt Word Count feature (Alt+T+W).

Actual Result – The result of word count was sufficient to drive me (for that matter any tester) nuts! It said the total number of pages and paragraphs as 0! And total number of words, characters (with and without spaces), and lines as 1! Look at the screenshot to have a better understanding of what I am trying to say here. Look at the Word Count window showing the weird statistics. Also look at the selection of text and see how the spaces have been selected even beyond the right-side margin area!

C) Test Steps – This time I selected all the text using Select All (Ctrl+A). And used Word Count (Alt+T+W) again!

Actual Result – I noticed that selecting all text (Ctrl+A), selected one extra space after the last letter of the whole text (i.e. Z). The result of word count was strikingly similar to my earlier one except for the fact that this time the total number of paragraphs was 1 instead of 0! Here is the screenshot showing the test result.

D) Test Steps – This time I typed in “ This is a test” just after the last letter of the text, i.e. ‘Z’. And now selected the whole text using mouse click-and-drag facility. And did a Word Count (Alt+T+W).

Actual Result – The total number of pages continues to say 0! But the word count said 5, characters (no spaces) 12, characters (with spaces) 16, paragraphs 0 and lines 1. This statistics was actually interesting. Before I could explain take a look at the screenshot first for a better understanding of the scenario. It looks like MS Word is not able to count the characters before the large number of spaces. To be specific Word is only able to count the characters starting from the second line! Apart from the total number of pages (which it shows as 0!), other statistics matches perfectly if we ignore the first line of the selected text.

E) Test Steps – After getting so much weird behaviours, now it was time for the final assault! I copied the space present between ‘A’ and ‘Z’ and started pasting it over and over again continuously by holding down the (Ctrl+V) key combination.

Actual Result – After a while the line that was stuck in the second line (“Z This is a test”) was moved to the third line! Then to the fourth, then to fifth and sixth… Wait a minute! Now the cursor had turned to hourglass shaped! Looking at the MS Word title bar showed “Microsoft Word (Not Responding)”! Here is a screenshot. Checking in the task manager confirmed that MS Word was not responding. I waited for as long as 20 minutes in a hope that it might recover from this bad state! But that never happened and I had to quit it from Window's Task Manager!

Try to test it yourself and see if you can get test results similar to mine. Feel free to contact me in case of any doubts or clarifications. Happy Testing…

Further Readings: Recently I have been testing few applications from some reputed software vendors like Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and Yahoo. You might be interested to take a look at them:

Testing Google – Boundary Value Exploration!
Yet another Bug in Google Suggest!
Bug in Yahoo Mail Beta!
Could this be a Bug with IE7 and Mozilla Firefox2?

Update: After getting “Microsoft Word (Not Responding)”, I kept inserting the spaces and oops. I could not see any text anymore! MS Word was blank without any text and was non-respondent. It could not recover from it and I had to close it from Window's Task Manager!

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About Debasis Pradhan

Debasis has over a decade worth of exclusive experience in the field of Software Quality Assurance, Software Development and Testing. He writes here to share some of his interesting experiences with fellow testers.