A bug in Google Docs is causing it to crash when a series of words is typed in a document opened with an online word processor.
Once a crash has occurred, you may not be able to access the document again easily because doing so will trigger the crash again.
BleepingComputer was able to reproduce the issue last night and reached out to Google.
Google told us that it is aware of the bug and is working on fixing it. Until then, we share a solution below.
And. And. And. and it’s gone!
it’s official—Google Docs crashes when it sees “And. And. And. And. And. And”. When “Show Grammar Suggestions” is on.
Google Docs user, Pat Needham raised the issue on the Google Docs editors’ help forum.
The user wrote, “I’ve only tried it in Google Chrome with documents from three different Google accounts (personal, G Suite Basic, and the work one which could be enterprise). All three experience the same problem.”
“It is case-sensitive. Hence ‘and. and. and. and. and.’ Trying with. It doesn’t cause it to crash.”
While Needham publicly reported the bug, it appears that the issue was discovered by Eliza Callahan who was writing a poetry novel for her novel using Google Docs.
In tests conducted by BleepingComputer last night, the behavior can be successfully reproduced on the latest version of the Chrome web browser running macOS Monterey.
After creating a new Google Docs document, as soon as we typed the offending string into the document and refreshed the page, we started getting the following error message and could not proceed review or edit the document:
Google Docs crashes when it sees “And. And. And. And. And. And”. (bleeping computer)
Needham’s findings have also been confirmed by other users running Firefox 99.0.1.
Another user, Sergei Dymchenko, said, “But. But. But. But. But.” triggered the same reaction. Some also observed that any words such as “besides, therefore, and, anyway, but, who, why, besides, however,” were kept in the same format.
A reader at YCombinator HackerNews suspected Google Docs to have a “Show grammar suggestions” option, which was turned on by default in our testing.
A Google spokesperson confirmed the presence of the issue to BleepingComputer, saying, “We are aware of the issue and the team is working on fixing it.”
How to recover your document?
Until Google has an answer to what causes this problem, it may be wise to turn off navigating to Grammarly Suggestions Tools→Spelling & Grammar and unchecking ‘Show grammar suggestions.’
Google Docs Grammar Check Option Enabled (bleeping computer)
If the bug has already been triggered and you are out of the Google Doc in question, there may be a solution.
Use the Google Docs mobile app to access the document, remove the offending words, and the file should now open gracefully on your Google Docs web version as well.
“It doesn’t crash Documents on mobile for some reason, so if you’ve lost one of your documents, you can get the Docs app on your phone, delete the offending sentence, and reload, Suggests user Sauron Gorthaur.
Update May 6th, 2022 04:56AM ET: As of this morning, BleepingComputer hasn’t been able to reproduce the bug. We await an official response from Google on the matter.
