If you are an extensive MS Word user, then you must have used the 'Document Map' option. This option is very handy and can make your document appear more structured and organized. However, sometimes you may have noticed that this feature sometimes gets you into some sort of trouble. At times, the font size in the Document Map pane appears too small. This can happen if the Word document is corrupted, which can get corrupt due to various reasons such as virus infections, incorrect registry entries, abrupt system shutdown, etc. In such cases, you should take appropriate corrective measures to rectify the problem. However, if you do not succeed in doing this then you should use a third-party Word fix software to perform doc repair.

Consider a scenario wherein you have a Windows XP system. You have created a large Word 2007 document of about 50-plus chapters and sections. You have enabled the 'Document Map' option in this document. One day, you notice that the font size in the Document Map pane has become too small and you are not able to read anything.

Cause:
The root cause of this problem is that the registry entry of MS Word may have got corrupt. You need to modify the registry entry to resolve the issue.

Resolution:
To resolve this problem, you should modify the registry entry using the 'regedit' utility. However, you should be extremely cautious as serious problems may occur if you do not perform the steps correctly. You need to perform the following steps to modify the registry entries:

• Exit all the MS Office programs.

• Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.

• Locate the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Data

• Click the Data key.

• Click Export on the File menu, type a file name for the backup copy of the key, and then click Save.
• Make sure that the key that you just exported is selected, and then click Delete on the Edit menu.
• Click Yes when you receive the following message:

“Are you sure you want to delete this key and all of its subkeys?”

• To exit Registry Editor, click Exit on the File menu.

After you delete the registry key and start Word again, Word runs the Setup program to correctly rebuild the registry key. However, if the file is still not repaired then you should use a third-party Word recovery software to repair Word file. These tools recover the corrupted Word documents without overwriting the original content.