The biggest cause of crashes is font conflicts in Microsoft Word for Mac .
There’s an application in your Applications folder called Font Book.
Open Font Book
In the left side click All Fonts
In the Font column, select a font then use Edit > Select All
From the Edit menu choose Resolve Duplicates. This only takes a minute, but nothing happens on screen except for the little wait cursor for a moment or two.
From the File menu choose Validate Fonts.
This opens a new window.Let it run till it’s done.
Click the check box to select all
Then click the Remove fonts button
This moves all duplicate and corrupt fonts to the trash.
Empty the Trash.
Restart your computer and see if Word and other applications no longer crash.