Freezeups with Powerpoint, Excel

[exiled2tx]

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

I'm posting this in the Office forum as it effects at least powerpoint and excel - maybe word too but I haven't seen it there.
I upgraded to 12.2.1 when it came out. Since that time, I'm getting unexplained freezups in these two programs. I'll be typing some text into a powerpoint title and it will just lock. I have to do a force-quit to get out of it. Come back in to the document and same thing. I would restart my computer and that would temporarily solve it so I thought it was a memory thing (even though I have 4 GB).
Then it has also started in Excel - I'd be typing into a cell and then it locks. At least in Excel though I could ESC out and be able to save the document. But it would reoccur unless I restarted the machine.
Happens once or twice - ok. But this seems to be five or six times a week. And today it occurred shortly after a startup so it shouldn't have been a memory problem (plus it was not a large Excel spreadsheet). I never had this problem with previous versions of Office on this machine. And I have absolutely no (known) problems with any other program or activity.
Any ideas as to what is going on and/or others having this problem?

 

[CyberTaz]

When is the last time you ran Disk Utility or some other utility app to
Repair Disk Permissions? That's the first step followed by a restart of your
Mac. The behavior you describe is also symptomatic of allowing programs to
run continuously and/or simply allowing your Mac to 'sleep' rather than
actually shutting it down once in a while. See how that works.

If that doesn't resolve the issue I'd next retrieve the OS X Leopard
(10.5.8) COMBO Update from Apple Downloads, apply that & repair permissions
again. [The Combos do a much more thorough job of revitalizing various
aspects of the OS than do the abbreviated updaters delivered by Software
Update. In fact, I haven't used an SU update for the OS in more than 3
years... For other Apple software yes, but for OS updates I always fetch the
Combos once they're available.]

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

 

[exiled2tx]

I repaired permissions and will see if this helps.

I do restart my computer every 2-3 days so I doubt that is it (plus the last time it happened was shortly after restart). I did use the combo updater at 10.5.6 but not for the last two updates. But I'll try the combo updater for 10.5.8 if the rebuilding of permissions doesn't help.

Thanks for the suggestions and quick response.

 

[Diane Ross]

I do restart my computer every 2-3 days so I doubt that is it (plus the last
time it happened was shortly after restart). I did use the combo updater at
10.5.6 but not for the last two updates. But I'll try the combo updater for
10.5.8 if the rebuilding of permissions doesn't help.

If the 10.5.8 combo does not fix your problems, you'll need to do an
"Archive & Install". The last time I had to do one, the only thing I had to
reinstall was my Microsoft keyboard software.