Ability to insert text in Word suddendly stopped!

[EB]

Can anyone advise on how to correct this?? Can no longer "control + V"
OR insert using toolbar to "Paste" any content into a word document.
(Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac). CAN copy and paste in other MS Office
applications, but Word suddendly stopped letting me. Help!
thanks!

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi EB,

I suspect you have munged preference files. See this page for common
troubleshooting procedures:
<http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/TroubleshootingIndex.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice; better yet, use another browser
for this site.)

Start with the link for damaged preferences. If that doesn't fix the
problem, work through the other procedures starting with testing the Normal
template.

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice ­ or use another browser.)
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[Anybody]

Hi EB,

I suspect you have munged preference files. See this page for common
troubleshooting procedures:
<http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/TroubleshootingIndex.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice; better yet, use another browser
for this site.)

Start with the link for damaged preferences. If that doesn't fix the
problem, work through the other procedures starting with testing the Normal
template.

I love how people spout these pages as the be-all and end-all of
solving Microsoft problems, and the final solution basically says
"delete and re-install".

The actual problem is that Microsoft can't program for peanuts,
especially on the Mac. All their applications are bug-ridden rubbish
that simply don't work and continually have problems from minor
weirdness to complete crashes. The only way around the problem is to
use something that does work.

 

[Elliott Roper]

I love how people spout these pages as the be-all and end-all of
solving Microsoft problems, and the final solution basically says
"delete and re-install".

The actual problem is that Microsoft can't program for peanuts,
especially on the Mac. All their applications are bug-ridden rubbish
that simply don't work and continually have problems from minor
weirdness to complete crashes. The only way around the problem is to
use something that does work.

You are full of it. While one might agree that some aspects of Office
lack the last word in couth and clean design, and that others are not
the last word in robustness, it is rare that the solution on the Mac
MVP pages is 'delete and re-install'.

The Mac MVP pages are written and maintained for free by several of the
people who patiently answer people's questions here, usually because
they have been helped by others in the past and that unlike you, have
some inkling of the meaning of fairness. They know that there are many
people whose work requires them to persevere with Word.

 

[Anybody]

You are full of it. While one might agree that some aspects of Office
lack the last word in couth and clean design, and that others are not
the last word in robustness, it is rare that the solution on the Mac
MVP pages is 'delete and re-install'.

I said the final solution is to re-install.

Yes, you can delete the preference to fix SOME problems (although God
knows why you have to!). You can dlete some supposedly corrupt font
(that only worries Word!) and that MAY fix SOME problem.

The point is that there's always yet another problem and there are LOTS
of problems that nothing seems to fix, including doing a re-install of
the entire Mac OS and software.

I was wrong about Microsloth not being able to program for peanuts.
They do program for peanuts because they're a team of monkeys.

The Mac MVP pages are written and maintained for free by several of the
people who patiently answer people's questions here, usually because
they have been helped by others in the past and that unlike you, have
some inkling of the meaning of fairness. They know that there are many
people whose work requires them to persevere with Word.

If people had real intelligence they would "have to perservere" with
Microsloth rubbish at all since the company would have been dead
decades ago.

 

[Anybody]

I meant to add that flicking through this newsgroup you see no end of
messages about "Word crashes", "this has gone missing", "that no longer
works", etc.

In the newsgroups for most other applications the requests are mostly
"how do I do this". That's because those applications work, Word
doesn't. Plain and simple.

 

[CyberTaz]

Why are you here?... For that matter, why are you anywhere?

 

[Anybody]

Why are you here?...

Because I have to get this doggy-doo of an application to work for more
than two days in a row. The patch 'n' pray fixes of deleting
preferences, etc. are of no use. The damn thing simply screws up again.

If it wasn't for head office fools insisting that we have to use Word I
wouldn't have installed it at all.

For that matter, why are you anywhere?

No idea. I never actually asked to be on this planet with it's over
abundance of greedy idiots and selfish morons.

 

[PhilD]

If people had real intelligence they would "have to perservere" with
Microsloth rubbish at all since the company would have been dead
decades ago.

I assume you meant 'they would NOT "have to persevere"...'

In which case, if you had real intelligence, why do you persevere?

That, I suspect, is one for the philosophers.

PhilD

 

[Anybody]

The initial part of your reply simply underscores my first question;

You are obviously convinced beyond the point of no return that the
product is irreparably flawed,

You express nothing but disdain for the assistance offered here and
disrespect for those who offer it,

You have not have not posed any sort of recognizable request on a
specific issue, unless you have done so using a different identity, and

You choose to offer nothing of a constructive nature,

so why waste your time here?

As I said, the so-called fixes are nothing but temporary patches, most
have nothing to do with Word at all and are simply the standard
"solutions" to the rare Mac problems. After performing any of those
so-called fixes Word will and DOES simply fall over again with the same
problem because it's bug-ridden.

For example, I've lost count the number of times I've had to delete and
reset my preferences because the sub-menus of all the menu bar menus
suddenly disappear, and yet there is no option in the Preferences that
I can see to actually turn those off (or why anyone would want to).

Other continuous problems include Word crashing at various times,
usually getting shorter and shorter "useful" periods until it simply
won't run at all and has to be completely erradicated from the hard
drive and reinstalled.

These problems ONLY happens with Word, so Word is obviously very badly
faulty. Although, Excel isn't used often enough to know it that too
falls over.

What about the angry, bitter, resentful cynics who insist upon
wallowing in & spewing forth their own vitriol?

There would be nothing to complain about if Microsoft actually bothered
to write an application that works or at least had the decenty to
properly fix the known bugs.

 

[Anybody]

I assume you meant 'they would NOT "have to persevere"...'

Yes. That was a typo.

In which case, if you had real intelligence, why do you persevere?

That, I suspect, is one for the philosophers.

No. I said, we're forced to use this hopeless garbage because head
office insists on it. In fact Word is ONLY used for stuff that has to
go back to them or has come from them or Windows users. For everything
else we use AppleWorks and have no problems whatsoever, which is not to
say it doesn't have it's own few bugs, but that it does at least work.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

I'm not exactly sure why I just decided to reply seriously to some of your
concerns, but I did, so read on.

For example, I've lost count the number of times I've had to delete and
reset my preferences because the sub-menus of all the menu bar menus
suddenly disappear, and yet there is no option in the Preferences that
I can see to actually turn those off (or why anyone would want to).

Sounds like you're in Word 2001? In that case, you have a perfectly
legitimate gripe in regard to losing your menus. However, it's my
understanding that Microsoft was never able to repro this bug and it's very
difficult to fix a bug that you can't repro. I know that when I was still
in Word 2001, I could never figure out what steps led to my menus going
south. Can you?

At any rate, this bug is gone in later versions of Word, but unless your
company upgrades, that doesn't do you any good. The one semi-workaround
that could make life less painful for you (assuming that what really ticks
you off is having to reset your preferences every time this happens) is
this:

Next time you lose your menus ... trash your settings file, reset your
prefs, and then make a copy of the new file with all your preferred
settings. Then whenever you lose your menus again, you can trash your bad
settings file and replace it with a copy of the copy (which you would rename
to the exact name of the original file). At least this way, you don't have
to reset every time this happens.

Other continuous problems include Word crashing at various times,
usually getting shorter and shorter "useful" periods until it simply
won't run at all and has to be completely erradicated from the hard
drive and reinstalled.

This should be fixable! It could be caused by a number of things but you
should not have to reinstall Word continually. If you want to work on
getting to the bottom of the problem, post back with more details ­
including your exact OS and Word version numbers ­ and a better attitude and
I'll do whatever I can to help you solve this.

In closing, don't make me sorry I took the time to reply to your post.

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice ­ or use another browser.)
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[Anybody]

I'm not exactly sure why I just decided to reply seriously to some of your
concerns, but I did, so read on.



Sounds like you're in Word 2001? In that case, you have a perfectly
legitimate gripe in regard to losing your menus. However, it's my
understanding that Microsoft was never able to repro this bug and it's very
difficult to fix a bug that you can't repro. I know that when I was still
in Word 2001, I could never figure out what steps led to my menus going
south. Can you?

Yep, using Word!
That causes it to crash which corrupts the preferences files. :-(

The actual steps are irrelevant since it appears to crash for numerous
reasons ranging from trying to copy/paste or simply clicking on a
button or opening a file.

This should be fixable! It could be caused by a number of things but you
should not have to reinstall Word continually. If you want to work on
getting to the bottom of the problem, post back with more details ­
including your exact OS and Word version numbers ­ and a better attitude and
I'll do whatever I can to help you solve this.

Under Mac OS X both Word 98 and Word 2001 both work for a little while
and then start crashing, which gets worse until eventually you can't
even open the program at all. Technically part of the problem is the
hopeless hack that Classic is to begin with, but this also happens to a
lesser degree under Mac OS 9 so it is also partly Word's fault. The
only "fix" seems to be re-installing Office, and even then it sometimes
means reinstall the whole OS.

As far as I can find through various techniques to temporarily patch it
from here and elsewhere, but there is apparently no way to fix it at
all.

Word 2004 seems a bit more stable, but still has many problems.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Under Mac OS X both Word 98 and Word 2001 both work for a little while
and then start crashing, which gets worse until eventually you can't
even open the program at all. Technically part of the problem is the
hopeless hack that Classic is to begin with, but this also happens to a
lesser degree under Mac OS 9 so it is also partly Word's fault. The
only "fix" seems to be re-installing Office, and even then it sometimes
means reinstall the whole OS.

As far as I can find through various techniques to temporarily patch it
from here and elsewhere, but there is apparently no way to fix it at
all.

Word 2004 seems a bit more stable, but still has many problems.

If you want to go to work on this problem, I'll stick with you as long as I
have anything useful to offer. But first, I need to understand your system.

What's your OS version, exactly? What version(s) of Office and Word do you
have installed, exactly (including update levels)? What third-party add-ins
do you use (check the Startup folder(s) for Word)?

Specifically and in detail, what procedures have you already tried for
fixing your crashing problems? When you have reinstalled, did you first use
the Remove Office tool to remove *all* versions of Office/Word before
reinstalling all the versions you use?

Are there any idiosyncratic aspects to the way you use Word, such as legacy
documents, complex tables/graphics, whatever else you can think of?

There *is* a reason for your crashes (other than 'Word sucks') but it will
take some digging to find it.

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice ­ or use another browser.)
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[Anybody]

If you want to go to work on this problem, I'll stick with you as long as I
have anything useful to offer. But first, I need to understand your system.

What's your OS version, exactly? What version(s) of Office and Word do you
have installed, exactly (including update levels)? What third-party add-ins
do you use (check the Startup folder(s) for Word)?

I'll have to check the version details when I go into that office
tomorrow.

Here's a major pain of a problem to get you started. Office 98 and
Office 2001 under both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X 10.3 / 10.4 refuse to
print properly to an A4 size page. Page Setup says it's A4, but when
you actually print anything (or to PS file / PDF) it comes out with
about an extra 0.5" gap at the bottom. The only way around the problem
is to force the bottom margin to be 0" and then it looks right when
printed.

None of the other applications have this problem and it occurs on
different Macs with different printers so it's solely an Office
problem.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

I'll have to check the version details when I go into that office
tomorrow.

Here's a major pain of a problem to get you started. Office 98 and
Office 2001 under both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X 10.3 / 10.4 refuse to
print properly to an A4 size page. Page Setup says it's A4, but when
you actually print anything (or to PS file / PDF) it comes out with
about an extra 0.5" gap at the bottom. The only way around the problem
is to force the bottom margin to be 0" and then it looks right when
printed.

None of the other applications have this problem and it occurs on
different Macs with different printers so it's solely an Office
problem.

I never said I had any expertise in printing problems . On this one, I
suggest you start another thread with an appropriate title. The folks who
are up on these issues should respond.

As for the crashing problems, I'll wait for your specifics (although it
wouldn't hurt to start a new thread for this also since I have a feeling
that others who may have something to contribute have stopped reading this
one).

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice ­ or use another browser.)
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>