context.sync hangs after getDescendants

[bendecall]

Word context.sync() call freezes Word app

Your Environment

• Platform: MacOS
• Host: Word
• Office version number: Version 16.92 (24120731)
• Operating System: MacOS 15.0.1

Expected behavior

I'm trying to loop through all paragraph and print them in the console with their descendants.
In certain (even small) documents, context.sync() freezes after loading the result of getDescendants().

Current behavior

Word app hangs and needs to be killed. I've tried to use a timer (promise.race) to stop my function after a certain amount of times, but it won't work.
No errors are raised for try-catch

Steps to reproduce

Execute this function (my function might not be perfect, but it's strange that the whole app is crashing)

export async function processDocument() {
	await Word.run(async (context) => {
		try {
			// Load all paragraphs at once
			const paragraphs = context.document.body.paragraphs;
			context.load(paragraphs, ["items"]);
			await context.sync();

			// Load basic properties for all paragraphs
			paragraphs.items.forEach((item) => {
				context.load(item, ["text", "isListItem"]);
			});
			await context.sync();

			// Now that we have isListItem loaded, we can load list-specific properties
			const listItems = paragraphs.items.filter((item) => item.isListItem);
			listItems.forEach((item) => {
				context.load(item.listItem, ["listString"]);
			});
			await context.sync();

			// Process all list items
			for (const item of listItems) {
				// Print the list item and its text
				console.log(item.listItem.listString + " " + item.text);

				// Get the descendants of the list item and print them
				const descendants = item.listItem.getDescendants(true);
				if (descendants) {
					context.load(descendants, ["items"]);
					await context.sync(); // This call freezes at the first title with subheadings. Putting the call outside the for loop doesn't work either.

					descendants.items.forEach(async (descendant) => {
						context.load(descendant, ["text"]);
						await context.sync();
						console.log(descendant.text);
					});
				}
			}

			console.log("Done");
		} catch (error) {
			console.error(error);
			return error;
		}
	});
}

Example.docx

Link to live example(s)

See attached .docx file which is used for testing.

Provide additional details

I cannot find a way to trigger an error or kill context.sync() when it's taking too much time (crash of MS Word app).

Context

I'm trying to create a tree of a document structure and would like to understand which headings are ancestors or descendants of others.

Useful logs

See attached docx file I use as example

[microsoft-github-policy-service]

Thank you for letting us know about this issue. We will take a look shortly. Thanks.

[bendecall]

Update: I tried the same function in Word Online and it won't crash, but will ignore the context.sync call.

RichApi.Error: The property ‘items’ is not available. Before reading the property value, call the load method on the container object and call ‘context.sync()’ on the associated request context.

[guoms1]

Hi, @bendecall

Thank you for your report! We’ve noted your issue and are currently investigating. We appreciate your patience and will get back to you as soon as we have more information.

Thank you for your understanding!