Find and Replace dialog loses focus constantly, erratically

[greggsewell]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

To duplicate my problem:

1. Open a document.

2. Open the Find and Replace dialog.

3. Enter terms in the Find and the Replace fields.

4. Press Return.

5. Word find the first instance.

6. Click Replace.

7. Word finds the next instance.

8. The Find and Replace dialog loses focus.

Note: The document being searched does not gain focus; no window does.

I've experimented with only one document open, only Word running, and more (restarting the OS and such), but cannot isolate anything consistent in this behavior.

Focus is often lost after the first replace, but not always.

Pressing Return if the focus is lost almost always causes Word to crash.

Clicking seems to help, but -- gosh darn-it -- I really use F&R intensely on very long (thousand-page-plus) multi-author documents, and simply have to have all the efficiency I can get. Hence my focus* on using the keyboard over the mouse.

Also: I've checked my OS settings. In System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts, I've deactivated all Keyboard Navigation shortcuts except for:

Move focus to the menu bar and
Move focus to the Dock

I also have set Full keyboard access to All controls.

Thanks for any help you can give.

* Apologies for the pun.

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Gregg;

Everything you describe may very well be happening, but F/R is most likely
not the cause so much as it is the victim It's a fairly simple mechanism
when used as you are indicating & has been around for eons. In a nutshell,
it is one of the most time-tested, tried & true features in Word... Which
brings us to where the fault most likely lies.

The structure of the document involved as well as certain other features
being in play while F/R is used are probably the culprits. For example, even
in a less lengthy document having Track Changes active or having a volume of
unresolved changes tracked in the document is a major contributor. Other
aspects of how the document has been handled by each of the "multi-author"
contributors chips away at the underlying structure of the file, then an
innocuous little utility like F/R becomes the scapegoat.

I don't mean to insult anyone, but those considerations & the document
corruption they cause are usually at the heart of such a problem. In fact,
crashing while in use is one of the foremost symptoms of a corrupt document
file ‹ regardless of what is actually being done or what feature is being
used at the moment of the crash. If you're having issues that other editors
of the file are *not* having, though, it could be a matter of corruption of
your Normal.dotm (or whatever template the document is based on) or possibly
a damaged Preferences file.

You may want to take a look at this page on the subject & fixes:

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

One thing you might want to experiment with:

In a new blank document type the following, then press return:

=rand(100,50)

That will give you 100 paragraphs of 50 sentences each.

Select All (Command+A), Copy (Command+C), go to the end of the doc (Right
Arrow), then Paste (Command+V) about 15 times. That will give you a quick
document of 1000+ pages.

Start at the beginning & run F/R on any word of your choice [I like
replacing "fox" with "Tasmanian Devil" ].

See if Word crashes.

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

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Greg:

Have you checked that "Spaces" is OFF and that you are fully updated to
12.2.1?

This sounds like the Spaces bug to me...

Cheers

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

To duplicate my problem:

1. Open a document.

2. Open the Find and Replace dialog.

3. Enter terms in the Find and the Replace fields.

4. Press Return.

5. Word find the first instance.

6. Click Replace.

7. Word finds the next instance.

8. The Find and Replace dialog loses focus.

Note: The document being searched does not gain focus; no window does.

I've experimented with only one document open, only Word running, and more
(restarting the OS and such), but cannot isolate anything consistent in this
behavior.

Focus is often lost after the first replace, but not always.

Pressing Return if the focus is lost almost always causes Word to crash.

Clicking seems to help, but -- gosh darn-it -- I really use F&R intensely on
very long (thousand-page-plus) multi-author documents, and simply have to have
all the efficiency I can get. Hence my focus* on using the keyboard over the
mouse.

Also: I've checked my OS settings. In System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse >
Keyboard Shortcuts, I've deactivated all Keyboard Navigation shortcuts except
for:

Move focus to the menu bar and
Move focus to the Dock

I also have set Full keyboard access to All controls.

Thanks for any help you can give.

* Apologies for the pun.

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[greggsewell]

Bob and John,

Thank you for your (as usual) polite, helpful, and detailed replies.

And please accept my apology for a tardy response.

I created a brand-new 1,000-page document using Bob's method and tested F&R; no problems.

John, Spaces is off.

So I have a corrupt document.

And I was so careful in creating my document.

I made copies of each author's original file, opened them, copied everything, and pasted into a new document based on one of my templates.

I then selected all text and formatted it with my basic style for body copy, then went through and applied styles to titles, subheads, captions, and the like.

Is there a more proper, safer, or sure-fire way to build a file based on a template with input from multiple files prepared by multiple contributors?

I suppose I could build into my process the "save as web page" procedure suggested here:

<http://word.mvps.org/mac/DocumentCorruption.html>

Saving the document as text-only isn't practical. To give the reason I need to briefly describe the project.

The book is titled Teaching Music through Performance in Band.

My company's Teaching Music through ____ series (TMTP) is a dozen years old and spans nearly twenty volumes all based on the same concept, all with the same format.

Part 1: Six or so chapters on the craft of band directing (or choir, or orchestra, or jazz ensemble -- we have multi-volume series for each genre).

Part 2: A Teacher's Resource Guide (TRG) for each piece reviewed in the book.

Each TRG is five to twenty pages and includes history, biographical info on the composer, technical analysis of the music, and a bibliography.

Each TMTP volume includes a minimum of 100 pieces.

There are full recordings of each piece on a set of CDs sold separately.

Each of the 100+ TRGs are written by individual music directors, co-ordinated by a series editor who is a notable in the field.

I'm the copy editor.

Sorry to be so long-winded about this, but now you can see that saving these as text-only would generate far more work in terms of text styles within the body copy.

And finally, to make this seem just that one bit more strange: I love working on this series. (I'm a music geek, a word geek (a Word geek, too), and a tech geek.)

Whew.

I'll hush now and go back to work.

 

[Clive Huggan]

On 1/10/09 7:26 AM, in article (e-mail address removed)9absDaxw,

I made copies of each author's original file, opened them, copied everything,
and pasted into a new document based on one of my templates.

I then selected all text and formatted it with my basic style for body copy,
then went through and applied styles to titles, subheads, captions, and the
like.

Is there a more proper, safer, or sure-fire way to build a file based on a
template with input from multiple files prepared by multiple contributors?

Hello Gregg,

Yes. Do what you are doing but paste in via Edit menu => Paste Special =>
Unformatted.

When you paste in otherwise, you are bringing in everything from the toxic
soup of others' documents.

Applying your own styles to the new material doesn't take that much time, as
I expect you know already. (In practice when adding to a pre-existing long
document I do the above first in a new blank document, then copy and paste
(not Paste Special) into my precious main document.

Sorry I can't help you otherwise -- but I see you are in good hands with Bob
and John.

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
============

 

[John McGhie]

Gidday Greg:

As Clive says, the cure to this is to always "Paste Unformatted".

The corruption you are experiencing is likely caused by Numbering Formats
(which you are not even using). Nothing will prevent some users from
fiddling with their numbering formats, and I they don't know what they are
doing, then they create "Autocrashing documents".

Rather than save as Web Page, a "Maggie" is a better fix for corrupted
numbering. You can pre-emptively Maggie the source document when you get
it, and that should hopefully head off these problems.

The Maggie:

1. Create a new blank document
2. Carefully select all of the text in the bad document EXCEPT the last
paragraph mark
3. Copy it.
4. Paste in the new document.
5. Save under a new file name and close all, then re-open.

This technique for de-corrupting is known as "Doing a 'Maggie'", after
Margaret Secara from the TECHWR-L mailing list, who first publicised the
technique.

Hope this helps

Bob and John,

Thank you for your (as usual) polite, helpful, and detailed replies.

And please accept my apology for a tardy response.

I created a brand-new 1,000-page document using Bob's method and tested F&R;
no problems.

John, Spaces is off.

So I have a corrupt document.

And I was so careful in creating my document.

I made copies of each author's original file, opened them, copied everything,
and pasted into a new document based on one of my templates.

I then selected all text and formatted it with my basic style for body copy,
then went through and applied styles to titles, subheads, captions, and the
like.

Is there a more proper, safer, or sure-fire way to build a file based on a
template with input from multiple files prepared by multiple contributors?

I suppose I could build into my process the "save as web page" procedure
suggested here:

<http://word.mvps.org/mac/DocumentCorruption.html>

Saving the document as text-only isn't practical. To give the reason I need to
briefly describe the project.

The book is titled Teaching Music through Performance in Band.

My company's Teaching Music through ____ series (TMTP) is a dozen years old
and spans nearly twenty volumes all based on the same concept, all with the
same format.

Part 1: Six or so chapters on the craft of band directing (or choir, or
orchestra, or jazz ensemble -- we have multi-volume series for each genre).

Part 2: A Teacher's Resource Guide (TRG) for each piece reviewed in the book.

Each TRG is five to twenty pages and includes history, biographical info on
the composer, technical analysis of the music, and a bibliography.

Each TMTP volume includes a minimum of 100 pieces.

There are full recordings of each piece on a set of CDs sold separately.

Each of the 100+ TRGs are written by individual music directors, co-ordinated
by a series editor who is a notable in the field.

I'm the copy editor.

Sorry to be so long-winded about this, but now you can see that saving these
as text-only would generate far more work in terms of text styles within the
body copy.

And finally, to make this seem just that one bit more strange: I love working
on this series. (I'm a music geek, a word geek (a Word geek, too), and a tech
geek.)

Whew.

I'll hush now and go back to work.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]