beachball keeps spinning on WORD document

I am in the midst of writing a document in WORD which I have not saved, and now I have the spinning beachball that won't stop. Usually when this happens I get to the point where I do a forced, hard shutdown, but in this case I don't want to lose my copy, but I can't save it while the thing is spinning. Any solution? FYI - I am using a Macbook Pro with Yosimite.

Thanks.