Saving Word 2007 to MOSS gives never ending “Getting list of available content types…” dialog

Question

We have a weird intermittent problem with saving from Word 2007 to our SharePoint 2007 (MOSS) document libraries that gives a dialog box that never goes away - it is titled "Content Types" and the message "Getting list of available content types..." with a green progress-type bar that keeps scrolling. It happens a lot on our training server (self-contained virtual machine with separate SQL Server) but more worryingly is happening on our live production server (which is in a medium server farm arrangement - web application server, another server for search/indexing and a SQL Server). All servers in the farms are 64 bit.

It is strangely random - the user has to kill Word 2007, then they recover their document and try to save to the same document library and it saves without a problem.

It happens more on the training server than the live server. The live web application server rarely goes over 20% CPU (usually around 5%) and memory peaks at 2Gb of the available 4Gb (usually at 1.5Gb) so I don't think its a resources issue.

The document libraries are customised and deployed using Features in a Solution. The only content type in them is the standard Documents content type.

Update We opened this with Microsoft as a support issue and it is a known issue that is targeted to be addressed in a Cumulative Update hotfix package for SharePoint in February 2009.

Edit Copied the above response to an answer so this question could be flagged as answered.

Answer 1

We opened this with Microsoft as a support issue and it is a known issue that is targeted to be addressed in a Cumulative Update hotfix package for SharePoint in February 2009.

Edit: As at 27 January 2009 we have the test patch so it looks like the official patch is set to be released on time.

Edit: This problem was fixed by the February Cumulative update which is also part of SP2: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/04/28/announcing-service-pack-2-for-office-sharepoint-server-2007-and-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0.aspx

However, you also need to patch Word for it to be effective; that patch is available here: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=962872

That is for Word 2007, other versions may need other patches.

Answer 2

I have encountered this issue as well. Do you know if it was corrected in MOSS Service Pack 2? Do you have a KB# or other ID from Microsoft which references this problem?