All Microsoft Office programs keep crashing

[ps104photo-psforum]

My MS Word crashes every time I add text from the Internet into a
document or go under the Word menu next to the apple menu. I cannot
even use Power Point. It crashes upon opening. I deleted MS office
from my hard drive, gotten read of the Microsoft plist in the
preference folder and reinstalled several times and, but it still
happens. Anyone have any ideas why? It's very frustrating.

I'm using OS 10.4.8 and Office v.X

Thanks,

PM

 

[ps104photo-psforum]

Hi PM -

First off, stop reinstalling - that rarely if ever cures anything on a Mac.

Next, go to the Mactopia web site, download & install the Office 10.1.9
updater. Then run Disk Utility - Repair Disk Permissions.

If that doesn't resolve the issue post back with what _does_ happen.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

Thanks, but it still is crashing.

 

[ps104photo-psforum]

When I run the Disk utility my hard drive is on there twice. One icon
has the name I gave my hard drive and the other says "74.5 GB Hitachi
HTs541..." I wasn't sure which one I should run the Disk utility on,
so I ran it on both. First under first aid I ran "repair disk
permissions" then "verify disk permissions" and then I ran "verify
disk." I did that for each icon of my hard drive. Did I do that right?

Thanks for the help!

PM

 

[CyberTaz]

Yes, but it only has to be done once using either of the two. There's no
harm done if you ran it on both, but in your case they both represent the
same thing... Easy to be confused The drive shows up once as a *device*
and once for each volume or partition it's been divided into. That allows
for selecting only one volume at a time or doing the whole drive at once.

Also - just for future reference - you don't have to run both Verify &
Repair Disk Permissions. The first just checks things out, the second checks
& fixes, so just running the Repair Permissions is fine. NOTE: Repair Disk
Permissions should be run after any installation of software and after any
OS or application updates.

As you found, though, you can only run Verify Disk on the drive you're
currently started up from, you can't run Repair Disk on the active startup
drive. You have to start up the Mac from a different drive in order to
Repair the primary HD. What was the result of Verify Disk - did it indicate
any errors found? If so, that needs to be addressed first.

If Verify Disk *didn't* indicate any errors I suggest you reapply the OS X
10.4.8 Combo Update appropriate for your Mac (PPC or Intel), then run Repair
Disk Permissions again afterward. This may very well *not* resolve the issue
if you "deleted MS Office" by dragging to the Trash. Trashing any part of
Office usually causes more problems & rarely fixes any. You will probably
have to reinstall Office *after* running the Remove Office utility in the
Office folder. If reapplying the OS update doesn't fix the problem see the
guidelines here & follow the instructions on how to Remove & Reinstall
Office properly:

http://word.mvps.org/mac/Diagnose.html

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[ps104photo-psforum]

After a phone call to Microsoft and many phone call to Apple and
needless re-installing my OS as well as trying other thing (all this
took probably 12 hours of my time the last two days) I finally talked
to the right guy at Apple who knew how to fix the problem. The
problem was not only with Office, but also with QuickTime when I ran
it on Safari and with FireFox. I did not realize all three problems
were related until today. The Safari/QT was so rear I did not pay much
attention to it and I totally deleted FireFox thinking it was a bad
program.

The problem was in my username/library/preference folder. I was
directed there a lot via phone support and online stuff I was told to
read. But the problem was not with anything I was previously told to
remove or read about removing. The right guy at Apple said to remove
the whole preference folder and restart. When I did that all my
preferences were not active, but all the apps in questioned worked
fine. He then said to add small groups of the .plists back in to the
new preference folder the computer created. After added each group I
had to restart. Eventually I found the bad plist, which was
"com.apple.internetconfig.plist." My preferences were all activated
again by putting all the good .plist in to the new preferences folder.
Problem solved. It really wasn't much, but a lot time to find out what
it was.

Thanks for your input.

PM

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Thank you more, for coming back to tell us what it really was.

Internetconfig is a new one to us: I didn't know that it could interfere
with Office applications. I suppose I should have guessed: it readily
trashes a Windows installation

Many thanks

com.apple.internetconfig.plist

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[CyberTaz]

As John noted, thanks for posting back with your results.

Sorry we couldn't resolve it faster here, but please understand that there
is a diagnostic process involved... I for one don't dive directly into OS X
as the solution without a pretty clear indication that it is necessary - and
even then it is usually advisable to confirm that all is in place as it
should be with Office before moving "up the ladder". Otherwise, even the
"right" OS-related fix may not have the desired result. As John also points
out this is a rather new & unexpected discovery which we appreciate you
sharing here.

Glad all is well!

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac