Excel crashing In Office 2004 when trying topaste a chart into Word

[Carnag]

Version: 2004
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
Processor: Intel

Hi:

I have Excel 11.5.4 (Office 2004), and Mac OS 10.4.11. I am trying to paste a chart from Excel into a Word document, which causes Excel to crash ("Quit unexpectedly"). Copying the same chart and pasting into the same document worked fine last September. Here is what I have tried thus far and learned, based on helpful suggestions in this forum:

0. If I log in normally, have Word running, start Excel, open the document, copy by selecting the chart and using Edit-copy, and then switch to Word, select Edit-paste special, Excel crashes. I then get the spinning beach ball in Word for a number of seconds, then a dialog box asking if I want to paste the unknown object or a picture.
- If I pick unknown object, I get a message that there is insufficient memory, and I should close the document now, and nothing is pasted.
- If I pick picture, I get a message that there is not enough memory, and nothing is pasted.
- If I choose paste instead of paste special, Excel crashes upon choosing the edit menu in Word, and i get the insufficient memory message.
- If I start Word after copying from Excel, I get Excel crashing as soon as I click the edit menu in Word, the spinning beach ball for a number of seconds, then I can paste the chart as an unknown object or picture. If I try using paste, instead of paste special, and start Word after copying in Excel, Excel still crashes, and I still get the spinning beach ball, but the graph is pasted.

1. If I copy the chart from Excel, and open a document in Neoffice, it will paste it as a bitmap, and Excel does not crash.

2. I ran Disk Utility and repaired permissions, and restarted my Mac - no effect; Excel still crashes when doing the paste into Word.

3. Tried starting Excel with the shift key down - it clearly did something since the formatting palette appeared (which I don't usually have open), but had no effect on the crashing behavior when I tried to paste into Word.
- I also tried holding down the shift key while starting Word *and* Excel - Excel now no longer crashes, and I can paste the chart into Word, but only as a picture.

4. If I hold down the shift key while logging in, Excel still crashes once I select the edit menu in Word, but I can paste the chart as an unknown object or picture into Word.
- the same behavior holds if I start Excel while holding down the shift key in this mode.

5. Just for variety's sake, I tried pasting into PowerPoint. Excel crashed when I hit "cancel" on the Project Gallery, but I could paste as an unknown object or picture into a slide.

So, any ideas on what I can do to get things working normally? I clearly have a few workarounds, but it would be nice if things just worked as expected. All assistance will be much appreciated!

 

[CyberTaz]

One more diagnostic step to try: Create a new User Account, log in as that
user & see what happens with your copy/paste efforts... And thanks for the
detailed information. It helps narrow down the possibilities.

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

 

[Carnag]

Thanks for the reply. I created a new user account, logged in as that user. Copy and paste with the same chart and document work fine. This is encouraging - what do I need to fix to get this working in my normal account???

 

[CyberTaz]

It sounds like it may be a corrupt preferences file. While Excel isn't
running go to: User/Library/Preferences (for your normal account) & delete
the file by the name of: com.microsoft.Excel.plist

See if things get straight when you launch & try again.

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

 

[Carnag]

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, moving this plist file to the trash while Excel was not running did not change the behavior described in the initital post. For good measure, I also threw out the equivalent plist file for Word - this also did not change the behavior.

Other possibilities?

 

[CyberTaz]

Well, since the new account presented no problem & the fresh preferences
didn't help in the old account the account itself must be corrupt.

You might first try downloading & re-applying the OS X 10.4.11 *Combo*
Update (Intel) which may fix the problem. You can get it here:

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/

Otherwise ‹ or if that doesn't work ‹ I'd suggest just moving to the new
account. You can waste a great deal of time trying to identify the problem
and may still not be able to correct it if you do find it. Should you go
that route you may want to review some of the info on the Entourage site...
Especially if you use Entourage as your email client. Follow the suggestions
as though you were moving to a new computer:

http://www.entourage.mvps.org/database/move.html

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

 

[Laroche J]

Have you tried opening your session without the login items? To do so, hold
the Shift key as soon as possible after clicking on your account icon or
after entering your password, until the dock appears.

If that solves the problem, go to the Accounts Systems Preferences, and
disable your login items one per one until you find the culprit. Log out and
log in normally (without the shift key) after each change to try.

JL
Mac OS X 10.4.11
Office v.X 10.1.9, Office 2008 12.1.7



CyberTaz wrote on 2009-06-15 15:59:

 

[Carnag]

Thanks for this suggestion (which I had tried previously) as well as thanks to the previous poster for the idea of creating a new account.

It turns out the cause of the problem is something a little different, and In creating a new excel spreadsheet in the same folder as I had the word document and the excel spreadsheet that were the original issue, I clued in as to the likely problem.

In creating the new spreadsheet, I received the message "document not saved" when I went to save it the first time (not as an error message, more like a confirmation, in the same way one gets a "file saved" message). I recalled having this same problem several months ago, with the solution being to save the document on the desktop or at least somewhere higher up the folder hierarchy. I am guessing that Office 2004 has a limit on the permissable lengths of directory paths (perhaps 256 characters?), and the folder I am working in is nested several folders deep in my documents folder.

It finally occurred to me this could also be causing the problem with my cut and paste from excel to word. Sure enough, when I moved the documents to the desktop, the cut and paste worked as expected. It also explains why things worked in my new account - I had moved the documents to a shared folder on the desktop to enable the new account to access the documents easily,

So, thanks again for the helpful suggestions, which did help in ruling out other causes. For others having the same problem who have ruled out "the usual suspects", you may want to also think about the length of your directory paths, and try moving problem files to the desktop to rule this issue out as a possible cause.