@DarkScribe
Well, you’re not going to believe this, but I just fixed the problem.
At least, I know what was causing the problem. I still don’t understand how it causes the problem, but it does for some reason. Someone who understands Macs more might be able to explain it or maybe my computer is still a little fucked up.
So, here’s what happened: ever since I started these notes documents, I wanted to quickly access them, so instead of scrolling through all my documents to find the document entitled “LIN.docx” for example, I typed in “lin” into the little search bar in the open box when you click “Open” on MS Word. When I typed in “lin”, all files in the documents folder containing the letters “lin” in the title and in the document would appear. This made the list shorter, so I could scroll down quicker to the L’s and find “LIN.docx”. Then when I double clicked on it, MS Word froze.
But that’s what was causing the problem: typing it in the search box instead of just scrolling down in the documents folder. I’ve tested it. If I just click “Open” and scroll down to “LIN.docx” and open it, it’s fine. But if I type it into the search box so that only documents with “lin” in them appear and then click on “LIN.docx” and open it, it freezes. I don’t understand why this happens, but it does and I can get it to work now.
I didn’t notice this at first because I had grown into the habit of typing it into the search box almost every time and I didn’t understand why that would be a problem, but it is. So I don’t do it anymore. Whatevs. It works now.