HELP! I've Installed Office 2004 and Word, Excel & Powerpoint Won't Open

[Z McCarty]

I just installed Office 2004 on my Pismo. Everytime I go
to click on Word, Excel, or Powerpoint, the splash screen
opens, runs for a bit, and then the error dialog message
pops up and it wants to send a report to Microsoft saying
that the program crashed. I have surfed the web looking
for an explanation and came across a few articles saying
that fonts might be doing this. Unfortunately, I've
watched the splash screen (I know, too much tim eon my
hands) and see that it appears to hang and quit when
lauching/loading the custom dictionary. I've attempted
the "safe" mode by holding down the Shift key when
opening the program. This doesn't work either (none of
the programs will open). Funny thing, Entourage will open
without a hitch. I've uninstalled Office v.X and
uninstalled and reinstalled Office 2004 several times
last night. U'd really like to get this to work and if
anyone has some specific suggestions (in particular, what
if any fonts specifically might be causing this). BTW, I
don't have Classic installed (did a clean intall of
Panther after wiping my hard drive clean to start from a
clean slate and this time chose to leave off Classic and
OS 9 System Folder as I hadn't been using it). I am not a
novice, but have tried everything that I can think of
that should work (except file permissions, which I may do
next for the hell of it). TIA for any and all help!

Cheers,
ZMac

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur [MVP]]

I just installed Office 2004 on my Pismo. Everytime I go
to click on Word, Excel, or Powerpoint, the splash screen
opens, runs for a bit, and then the error dialog message
pops up and it wants to send a report to Microsoft saying
that the program crashed. I have surfed the web looking
for an explanation and came across a few articles saying
that fonts might be doing this.

I really suspect that's the case here...

Unfortunately, I've
watched the splash screen (I know, too much tim eon my
hands) and see that it appears to hang and quit when
lauching/loading the custom dictionary.

Yeah, but ENtourage also uses the custom dictionary.

I've attempted
the "safe" mode by holding down the Shift key when
opening the program. This doesn't work either (none of
the programs will open). Funny thing, Entourage will open
without a hitch.

That really points toward the fonts then.
If you are worried about the custom dictionaries, you can simply move
them to another location temporarely to test this, otherwise you'll have
to de-activae fonts by batch to try and find out which one is
responsible.

If you are running MacOS X 10.3 you can use the FontBook to do that. You
can also use FontDoctor (even in demo mode) to identify corrupted or
conflicting fonts.


Corentin

 

[Z McCarty]

I found the problem. It was "a" font (out of my 900+ fonts). For future
reference, the one screwing me up was titled TremorITC TT in case anyone
else out there has the same problem. It might save some time searching if
this font is installed to go ahead and try removing it. Thanks for the help
and affirmation of my suspision as to what was causing my problem. It's a
shame that one font can cause me to loose over 4 hours of productivity just
trying to find the solution to the problem then actually eliminating fonts. Oh
well, my fonts probably needed a good cleaning out anyhow. Thanks and I
hope my experiences might help someone else out there!
Cheers,
ZMac

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Oh well, my fonts probably needed a good cleaning out anyhow.

Personally, I can't imagine what I'd need 900+ fonts for...

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur [MVP]]

Personally, I can't imagine what I'd need 900+ fonts for...

) I know a few people working on advertisement and publishing who
have way more that 900 fonts.... Some professions make a huge use of
fonts...

Corentin

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I know a few people working on advertisement and publishing who
have way more that 900 fonts.... Some professions make a huge use of
fonts...

That's why I said "Personally". <g>

Personally, I also wonder how many of those "way more than 900 fonts"
your advertisement professional acquaintances use in, say, a typical
year.

Perhaps it's my failing. I can hardly distinguish among many of the 120
or so that come with OS X and Office.

 

[Ramón G Castañeda]

That's why I said "Personally". <g>

Personally, I also wonder how many of those "way more than 900 fonts"
your advertisement professional acquaintances use in, say, a typical
year.

Perhaps it's my failing. I can hardly distinguish among many of the 120
or so that come with OS X and Office.

900 fonts is nothing. I have well over 2,000 fonts and know a lot of of
folks that have many times that number. Of course, you need a professional
font management utility like FontAgent Pro to manage them. Auto activation
is a must. Apple's Font Book is not a professional management utility.

And yes, you have to learn your fonts, one by one.

Users in prepress and printing bureaus, as well as graphic designers and
advertising agencies will indeed use thousands of different fonts in any
given week, let alone a whole year.

Of course, the applications are Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop.
QuarkXPress is a mess, so it's been losing ground for years. MS Office
applications are not a factor in that market at all.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Users in prepress and printing bureaus, as well as graphic designers and
advertising agencies will indeed use thousands of different fonts in any
given week, let alone a whole year.

I have no problem believing that medium to large prepress and printing
bureaus use thousands of fonts a week.

However, the idea of a graphic designer using even a thousand fonts a
week strains credulity:

40 hrs/week * 60 minutes per hour = 2400 minutes

So the graphic designer applies a unique font every 2.4 minutes? And
someone finds enough value in his/her doing so that they are willing to
pay him/her for this?

Call me a troglodyte, but 4 fonts is about all I (and, fortunately, my
clients) can handle regularly: Verdana for the screen, Times or Arial
for print, and Comic Sans for a school web site I maintain.

All the rest is just so much visual noise to me...

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

40 hrs/week * 60 minutes per hour = 2400 minutes

So the graphic designer applies a unique font every 2.4 minutes?

:-> The people I know in advertisement work around 15h a day 7 days a
week. THat would let them use the fonts for a good 6 minutes 18 seconds
;-))


Corentin

 

[JE McGimpsey]

:-> The people I know in advertisement work around 15h a day 7 days a
week. THat would let them use the fonts for a good 6 minutes 18 seconds
;-))

While I'm sure it doesn't apply to your acquaintances, the burnout
factor of that work schedule *would* explain a lot about the quality of
the advertising I see...<g>