Avoid Office v.x 10.1.5 update

[Stephen Esrati]

I installed this update and had trouble both with my Excel
and Word programs. In Word, I was unable to print
mail-merged documents. In Excel, it screwed up my
preferences and caused me to be unable to do habitual Excel
tasks.

I ended up paying Bill Gates $35 for advice on his to fix
Excel, cleverly hidden in a Library folder in my Users
folder. I thought preferences were in the System Preferences.

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

I ended up paying Bill Gates $35 for advice on his to fix
Excel, cleverly hidden in a Library folder in my Users
folder. I thought preferences were in the System Preferences.

Apologies, people here could have given you that advice for free, but you
happened to post at a time when several experts were away from the
newsgroups, and so your posts went unanswered. I am sorry. On the other
hand, some browsing of recent threads and posts around yours would have led
you to general troubleshooting tips, including that one.

DM

 

[Bernard REY]

Stephen Esrati wrote :

I installed this update and had trouble both with my Excel
and Word programs. In Word, I was unable to print
mail-merged documents. In Excel, it screwed up my
preferences and caused me to be unable to do habitual Excel
tasks.

I (as many other Office users) have installed this update without any
problem. As you may see it (Command-I on the icon), Word isn't concerned by
this update and remains untouched. Did you "Repair the Disk Permissions" on
your startup disk after the update? This is a very useful task and should
be performed after any install or update. At least it should be the first
thing to attempt when things are going wrong (the second being the trashing
of the preference files)...

I ended up paying Bill Gates $35 for advice on his to fix
Excel, cleverly hidden in a Library folder in my Users
folder. I thought preferences were in the System Preferences.

In Mac OS X, the preferences are "hidden" in the "~/Library/Preferences/"
folder of the current user (ie you). This is by design in OS X and it's a
good thing that Microsoft is compliant to this. You'll find the preferences
of *any* application in there. Too bad you had to pay for this. I suppose
you could also have found that information in Apple's System Help File.

 

[Stephen Esrati]

Bernard REY wrote:

Did you "Repair the Disk Permissions" on

your startup disk after the update? This is a very useful task and should
be performed after any install or update. At least it should be the first
thing to attempt when things are going wrong (the second being the trashing
of the preference files)...

No. I don't even know how. I do have Macaroni installed, an
it i supposed to repair my permissions.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Stephen,

Here's the procedure:

For OS 10.2.x or 10.3:
Go to Macintosh HD/Applications/Utilities. Open up Disk Utility. Select
your hard disk, then click the First Aid tab. Click the button to "Repair
Disk Permissions".

This should be your first line of defense for most problems.

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/WordMac/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>

 

[Bernard REY]

Stephen Esrati wrote :

No. I don't even know how. I do have Macaroni installed, an
it i supposed to repair my permissions.

Yes, Macaroni is supposed to do that (Requires you to run at least Mac OS X
10.2, it reads). So does OnyX and some others. You can still run the "Disk
Utility" *manually*, as described by Beth. But if all this didn't change
things (the mail merge printing issue), you may try and delete some more
preferences (now you know how), maybe the Word prefs...

A good test is usually to create a new Mac OS X identity and then, from
within this identity, launch Word. If things go bad again, you may try an
uninstall Office completely (using the "Remove Office" tool to be found on
the CD) and reinstall it from scratch. Then apply the updates, repair the
disk permissions and things should run again. This doesn't have to be done
on a regular basis, of course, but it's sometimes the only way out...

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

Stephen,
Some resources to bookmark and follow for general troubleshooting of Office:

http://www.mcgimpsey.com/macoffice/index.html#macoffice

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/WordMac/index.htm

DM

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word]]

Hi Stephen:

This responds to article <[email protected]>,

folder. I thought preferences were in the System Preferences.

Welcome to OS X... It's a multi-user system, so the most important version
of each resource or preference is unique to the user, and it's in the user's
Library hierarchy. Anything in the user structure overrides anything in the
system structure

--

Please respond only to the newsgroup to preserve the thread.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Stephen Esrati]

Thank you, Beth, I did it and it made quite a few repairs.
But I thought installing Macaroni was supposed to do that
automatically all the time.

 

[Bernard REY]

Stephen Esrati wrote :

Thank you, Beth, I did it and it made quite a few repairs.
But I thought installing Macaroni was supposed to do that
automatically all the time.

Macaroni will do it as it has been set it in the schedules (see it in the
corresponding "Preference pane"). You can track the recent jobs and see
what has been run recently (the fact that it did repair when you launched
the permission repair manually doesn't mean it hasn't been run recently)