word shuts down after some time of inactivity

One thing that comes to mind is to check where you're saving the Word documents. If you're saving them to MS OneDrive, that might be the reason they're closing. If you're saving them to your Mac, then they shouldn't be closing.

Is the period of inactivity you mentioned tied to the the Sleep settings on your Mac? Set sleep and wake settings for your Mac - Apple Support

(In other words, I'm assuming that if you close the lid for 10 minutes or so, then open it again, your documents haven't been closed?)

I'm having the same issue on a Mac Mini desktop, so it has nothing to do with closing the lid of a laptop. I'm having all the same issues described in this thread, and it just started about 2 months ago, without any changes--that I'm aware of--on my computer. I am saving the documents to my Mac.

I am having the same issue since I downloaded Sonoma. Everytime I close my laptop over night, words shuts down all my documents. This is really extremely frustrating as I need to pick up my work and usually have 5-10 docs open on any given day. This only happens over night.

I would really appreciate it if someone can contact me with a solution. This is really difficult and I can't keep going like this. I have a macbook pro running Sonoma 14.2.1

I have been experiencing the same issues with Word closing for some time. Even more frustratingly, it sometimes forgets to save my progress beforehand. Even preemptively saving Word documents before closing my computer fails to solve the problem sometimes lately. When I reopen my Mac not only is Word closed by my saved filed are reverted to an earlier version...