Bad window behavior on a Mac

[Greg]

Word 2004 for Mac OS X. Running a PowerBook 800 with 1 GB RAM and
always have the latest updates to OS and Office.

When I'm Page Layout view, the window frequently displays improperly. 2
separate problems which are independent of each other, although they
can display simultaneously. Sometimes the window displays properly,
although ultimately it will start displaying at least one of the
following behaviors. The temportary fix is to restart Word

1) The horizontal scroll bar appears about 1/4 up from the bottom of
the page. The area below the scroll bars -- while still part of the
window -- is blank. So I only get to see 3/4 of the page.

2) When clicking the down arrow of the vertical scroll bar, the last
visible line of text will repeat itself ad nauseum. Therefore, the text
below the last displayed line never gets shown -- just the repeated
text line. This only happens when using the vertical scroll bar down
arrow. Clicking within the scroll bar to reveal larger chunks ot text
always behaves normally.

I've had this problem ever since installing Office 2004 about 1.5 years
ago. I've even removed then reinstalled Office 2004. I've deleted all
preferences I can find. Same behavior when running Mac OS 10.3 and 10.4.

 

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

Hi Greg:

This is the "incomplete pagination" bug, which seems to be revisiting us in
Word 2004.

It's a very old bug which first surfaced in Word 6 on the PC. It is
sensitive to (among other things...) the graphics driver used on the machine
in question. You may find that by reducing the colour depth of your
computer's display, you experience the problem less often.

It is very irritating. It's a by-product of Word's "idle loop" processing
architecture. Usually you can 'cure' it by:

1) Page BACK in the document two or three screenfuls

2) Page forward to where you were.

This flushes the "screen buffer" in which Word keeps the made-up copy of the
onscreen image, and forces Word to redraw its screen. Going back is better
than going forward, because Word stores only a limited amount in the screen
buffer, but it usually stores (roughly) the previous page and the five
following the page where you are actually working. By paging back, you have
to page a lesser distances to force a buffer flush.

If that doesn't fix it:

A) Click into Normal View (there's a button for that at the bottom left of
the window)

B) Tap the up- or down-arrow (to force the area you were working in onto the
display

C) Click back into Page Layout view.

This forces Word to repaginate the entire document, and in doing so, to
flush all of its buffers. It can take a few seconds to do this on a long
document.

Cheers

Word 2004 for Mac OS X. Running a PowerBook 800 with 1 GB RAM and
always have the latest updates to OS and Office.

When I'm Page Layout view, the window frequently displays improperly. 2
separate problems which are independent of each other, although they
can display simultaneously. Sometimes the window displays properly,
although ultimately it will start displaying at least one of the
following behaviors. The temportary fix is to restart Word

1) The horizontal scroll bar appears about 1/4 up from the bottom of
the page. The area below the scroll bars -- while still part of the
window -- is blank. So I only get to see 3/4 of the page.

2) When clicking the down arrow of the vertical scroll bar, the last
visible line of text will repeat itself ad nauseum. Therefore, the text
below the last displayed line never gets shown -- just the repeated
text line. This only happens when using the vertical scroll bar down
arrow. Clicking within the scroll bar to reveal larger chunks ot text
always behaves normally.

I've had this problem ever since installing Office 2004 about 1.5 years
ago. I've even removed then reinstalled Office 2004. I've deleted all
preferences I can find. Same behavior when running Mac OS 10.3 and 10.4.

--

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. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

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

Greg emailed me offline to add more information.

It appears that he is NOT suffering the "Incomplete Pagination" bug. (Well,
he may be, but it doesn't respond to the usual remedies.)

So if anyone else has any further suggestions, Greg would like to hear them

Hi Greg:

This is the "incomplete pagination" bug, which seems to be revisiting us in
Word 2004.

It's a very old bug which first surfaced in Word 6 on the PC. It is
sensitive to (among other things...) the graphics driver used on the machine
in question. You may find that by reducing the colour depth of your
computer's display, you experience the problem less often.

It is very irritating. It's a by-product of Word's "idle loop" processing
architecture. Usually you can 'cure' it by:

1) Page BACK in the document two or three screenfuls

2) Page forward to where you were.

This flushes the "screen buffer" in which Word keeps the made-up copy of the
onscreen image, and forces Word to redraw its screen. Going back is better
than going forward, because Word stores only a limited amount in the screen
buffer, but it usually stores (roughly) the previous page and the five
following the page where you are actually working. By paging back, you have
to page a lesser distances to force a buffer flush.

If that doesn't fix it:

A) Click into Normal View (there's a button for that at the bottom left of
the window)

B) Tap the up- or down-arrow (to force the area you were working in onto the
display

C) Click back into Page Layout view.

This forces Word to repaginate the entire document, and in doing so, to
flush all of its buffers. It can take a few seconds to do this on a long
document.

Cheers

--

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. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410