Google Docs appears to crash at the sight of “And. And. And. And. And.”
A bug is causing Google Docs to crash if a string of words is typed into a document, opened with the online word processor. After crashing, the document won’t be easily re-accessed. Doing so would trigger the crash again.
And. And. And. And… it’s gone
Pat Needham, a Google Doc user, has shared this issue to the Google Docs Editors Help forum. He wrote:
“I’ve only tried in Google Chrome, with documents from three separate Google accounts (personal, G Suite Basic, and work one which might be enterprise). All three experience this same issue,” He further said:”It’s case-sensitive. So trying with ‘and. and. And. and. And.’ doesn’t cause it to crash.”
Though Needham has reported this bug publicly, the first person to ever experience this bug was Eliza Callahan, who uses Google Docs to write a poem for her novels. A test conducted by BleepingComputer concluded that the cause of this crash should be replicated on the newest version of the Chrome web browser.
Once a new document is created on Google Docs, type any string of words into it. Then refreshing the page will show error messages like no further review, inability to connect, or editing the file. Moreover, the issue highlighted by Needham has been confirmed by other users who use Firefox 99.0.1.
Sergii Dymchenko is yet another user who has encountered a similar response. He said, writing strings like ‘But. But. But. But. But’, has caused the same issue. Some other users also noticed that putting terms including ‘And, But, Who, Therefore, Why, Besides, Who’ in the same setup generates similar responses.
A YCombinator HackerNews reader assumed the crash was due to the “Show Grammar Suggestion” option in the Google Documents. However, it was active by default in our reproduction of this issue.
In addition to this, a spokesperson from Google validated the bug’s existence to BleepingComputer by stating, “we’re aware of this issue and the team is working on a fix.”
How to recover the document?
Until Google provides us with an answer and solution by way of what and why this problem happens, as for now – the best options seem to be to turn off the grammar suggestions to Tools → Spelling & grammar and un-ticking the ‘Show Grammar Suggestions.’
However, if the crash has already happened, and the Google Document is stuck, there could be a possible solution. Using Google Docs on a mobile device can help you access or recover the crashed document. Removing the offending words and reloading the file could also be re-accessed on the web version.
Another user, Sauron Gorthaur, has revealed that for some reason the document doesn’t crash on a mobile version. So, if you’ve lost an important document due to this bug, switching to the Docs app on your phone, erasing the offending words, and reloading can help.
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