Apple Mail not working right???

[Aaron]

Ok, so I installed Office:Mac 2004, now all of a sudden, my Apple Mail
(the Apple provided email application) dock icon no longer shows me
how many messages I have waiting! VERY irritating!!

This sequence of events started last night when I first installed
Office, and then lo and behold when I opened Word for the first time,
all of these fonts got installed. I'm an Extensis Suitcase kind of
guy. I don't really like all those fonts in my system folder. I've
even disabled all the other "stock" fonts except for Geneva and Lucida
Grande. I also had Arial enabled since that's what the dock icon uses.
The dock icon stopped working last night. I decided to do a restore
and reinstall my apps and files.

This morning/today, I reinstalled all my software and backed up files.
When I installed Office this time, I moved the font and font library
files into an offsite folder so that I could use Suitcase to determine
just when those fonts would be available. I did this before opening
Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for the first time.

Anyone have any ideas why Office is interferring with this
functionality??????

 

[Barry Wainwright]

Ok, so I installed Office:Mac 2004, now all of a sudden, my Apple Mail
(the Apple provided email application) dock icon no longer shows me
how many messages I have waiting! VERY irritating!!

This sequence of events started last night when I first installed
Office, and then lo and behold when I opened Word for the first time,
all of these fonts got installed. I'm an Extensis Suitcase kind of
guy. I don't really like all those fonts in my system folder. I've
even disabled all the other "stock" fonts except for Geneva and Lucida
Grande. I also had Arial enabled since that's what the dock icon uses.
The dock icon stopped working last night. I decided to do a restore
and reinstall my apps and files.

This morning/today, I reinstalled all my software and backed up files.
When I installed Office this time, I moved the font and font library
files into an offsite folder so that I could use Suitcase to determine
just when those fonts would be available. I did this before opening
Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for the first time.

Anyone have any ideas why Office is interferring with this
functionality??????

Office does not 'mess with' anything connected with apple mail. Yours is
the first report I have seen of any problems with mail after installing '04,
and from your description, I would suspect that you are the one that is
'interfering with this functionality'.

Try to install the software and use it as is. See if everything works
properly then, and then change one thing at a time until you find out what
has caused the problem.

 

[Aaron]

When I tried "to install the software and use it as is." as you
stated, the functionality stopped working then. That was the first
time I installed Office. After checking, searching, and rechecking, I
determined that the cause of the problem was because when Word
installed the fonts into my system folder, it overwrote the Apple
provided version of the "Arial" font file that Apple Mail points to
for the dock icon. This is what prompted me to restore the system so
that the original factory installed version of Arial was back. Does it
make sense to me that the version of Arial should make any difference?
No, not at all. But for some reason, it does make a difference.

Now if simply installing Office causes me as the user to "interfere
with the functionality," then guilty I must be. Using Font Book in OSX
Panther, I had previously determined that enabling/disabling Arial is
what controls the dock icon showing or not. I've tried a simple
install without any intervention on my part, and it prevents the icon
from working. I've tried a "custom" install by moving the font folders
out of the office environment and letting suitcase handle the
activation of those fonts. So at this point, I'm somewhat at a loss.

Any other ideas??

 

[JE McGimpsey]

when Word
installed the fonts into my system folder, it overwrote the Apple
provided version of the "Arial" font file that Apple Mail points to
for the dock icon. This is what prompted me to restore the system so
that the original factory installed version of Arial was back. Does it
make sense to me that the version of Arial should make any difference?
No, not at all. But for some reason, it does make a difference.

Did you try restarting before restoring the system? I would think that
that would reestablish the link.

 

[Aaron]

Did you try restarting before restoring the system? I would think that
that would reestablish the link.

Yes, I did try that a couple of times. I figured it out this
afternoon. I made a copy of the Apple version of the Arial font file
and put it in my local user library font folder (the only one in there
now) and installed it through Font Book. It created a duplicate for
each style of Arial (Bold, Italic, etc.) But then through Font Book, I
looked to see where the duplicate was located and it was in the
/system/library/fonts folder (the original location). I disabled that
version of the font in Font Book, and enabled the version in my local
user library.

It works now. It was just very frustrating to think that the only
reason it stopped working was because of an application install. It
was even MORE frustrating to hear from someone that it must have been
because of something I had done as the first responder stated.
Especially when all I had done was install an application.

At this point, I'm just glad it's fixed. And I'm even happier that I
was actually able to figure it out myself.