mac microsoft word problem

[CASSIE]

Hi Anyone out there!
I'm a new mac user. I installed office mac and had previously been
using the trial version on my new mac.
When I open a blank document a document I had previously been using
pops up.
Even in project gallery it is showing as my normal document.

How do I set up a new document? The previous document was saved as two
columns so when I try
clearing it it thinks two columns is normal and I have no idea how to
get it back to a normal document.

Someone please help.
Thanks!
cassie

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Hi Cassie,

The new blank documents are based on the Normal template.

You need to find your Normal template, open it up, and delete the text and
change the column formatting.

Or you can just quit Word, drag Normal to the desktop and restart Word to
let it generate a new fresh one. If you've customized Normal, you'd have to
try to recover those, in that case.

Your choice. The information here will tell you where to find Normal, and
which choice might be better for you:
http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/MacWordNormal.htm
(hit refresh a few times in Safari, or use a different browser)

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Cassie,

Did you run the Remove Office tool to get rid of the trial version before
installing the full version? You're supposed to do that. I recommend that
you do a complete and proper removal and reinstallation of both versions of
Office. It's very simple to do; basically you just run the removal tool and
then re-do the installation. However, you'll find complete, step-by-step
instructions here: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/RemoveReinstall.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice; better yet, use another
browser.)

Then, if you're still having problems when opening a new document, quit
Word, go to Home/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Normal. Normal is the
template upon which all new documents are based (unless you specify
otherwise). Trash Normal and then relaunch Word; Word will create a new
fresh Normal template and everything should be fine.

You can try the Normal template fix first if you want, and it will probably
fix the problem; but if you leave the trial version active, you'll run into
other problems sooner or later so you might as well do the
removal/reinstallation now.

If none of the above fixes the problem (and I'm pretty sure it will), post
back. It's possible that you have *two* Normal templates (in different
locations, since they can't coexist in the same folder).

Hope this helps.

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice ­ or use another browser.)
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[googmeister]

(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice; better yet, use another
browser.)

Huh, this website is supporting an OS X product but doesn't render
properly in Safari or conform to web standards. You MVPs are a great
deal of help, but please fix your broken website - the .html doesn't
even have a valid DOCTYPE.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Huh, this website is supporting an OS X product but doesn't render
properly in Safari or conform to web standards. You MVPs are a great
deal of help, but please fix your broken website - the .html doesn't
even have a valid DOCTYPE.

It's a subsection of a much larger site, by the way, the Mac portion is not
an independent site.

Please see the explanation here:
http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/
(will load just fine in Safari)

 

[googmeister]

It's a subsection of a much larger site, by the way, the Mac portion is not
an independent site.

Please see the explanation here:
http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/
(will load just fine in Safari)

Thanks for the explanation. Hard to believe the designer chose not
to test in Safari, but since this is just a volunteer website, I agree
that I have no right to complain.

However, according validator.w3.org, the following
claim of standards compliance does not appear to be correct.

The site is written in absolutely standard HTML 4.0 against the
public
W3C DTD for HTML 4.0 Transitional.

I am no web expert, but it reports 19 errors for

http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/RemoveReinstall.htm

including no DOCTYPE.


Note that if you remove the frame junk, you seem to avoid
the annoying issues, e.g.,

http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/RemoveReinstallContent.htm

It would be great if you supplied this kind of link in the future for
us Safari users.

Anyway, like I said before, your help is greatly appreciated here!

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Thanks for the explanation. Hard to believe the designer chose not
to test in Safari, but since this is just a volunteer website, I agree
that I have no right to complain.

The site was designed *well* before Safari existed. It's a good 1000 pages,
and most of it is general Word advice, not Mac-specific. Try loading one of
the regular pages--see those 10 tabs on it?--you'll see the scope of the
issue:
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/index.htm
(hit refresh a few times in Safari, or use a different browser)

Since the design was already set, what would be the point of testing in
Safari now, knowing it doesn't work well?

(as a Mac user, you may not have picked up on the fact that the site is very
carefully designed to look like WinWord--in fact, more or less like the
prefs-equivalent dialog in Page Layout view)

Note that if you remove the frame junk, you seem to avoid
the annoying issues, e.g.,

Well, yes--doesn't the explanation *say* the problem is frames? Actually
it's something like having 3+ frames, not just frames alone, and apparently
is in Safari's base (Konqueror?) because some other browser (OmniWeb?) shows
it too. This is reputable hearsay, not something I personally have tested.

http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/RemoveReinstallContent.htm

It would be great if you supplied this kind of link in the future for
us Safari users.

Yeah, I noticed that a few days ago, in a different context. However, then
the site is completely non-browsable, people would have no idea that
anything else existed on it, and it's more difficult to navigate to the ton
of useful information it holds. Tradeoff. Personally, it's against my
principles to discourage access to information like that. Though I guess
Macs no longer come loaded with two browsers, which changes the situation a
little.

DM

PS. I don't know enough to comment on the validation issue, but I'm sure
your comments will be noted in the appropriate quarters.

PPS. Do you really have only a *single* browser on your system? Is that a
common situation?

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Thanks for the explanation. Hard to believe the designer chose not
to test in Safari, but since this is just a volunteer website, I agree
that I have no right to complain.

Safari didn't exist when the site was designed.

However, according validator.w3.org, the following
claim of standards compliance does not appear to be correct.

The site is written in absolutely standard HTML 4.0 against the
public
W3C DTD for HTML 4.0 Transitional.

I am no web expert, but it reports 19 errors for

http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/RemoveReinstall.htm

including no DOCTYPE.

I don't know enough about these issues to comment, except to say that I
don't believe they're responsible for the Safari incompatibility. That
seems to be due to the frameset construction of the site.

Note that if you remove the frame junk, you seem to avoid
the annoying issues, e.g.,

http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/RemoveReinstallContent.htm

It would be great if you supplied this kind of link in the future for
us Safari users.

If we provided this kind of link, the visitor to the site would have no
navigation and no idea what the site has to offer. What's more, if the
visitor clicked on any of the links to other articles on the site, s/he
would end up in the same predicament anyway; only it would be worse because
there would have been no warning.

Anyway, like I said before, your help is greatly appreciated here!

I'm glad you feel that way but please understand that the MVPs are no more
than users like everyone else here. The only difference is that Microsoft
has recognized us for our expertise and volunteer efforts. Everything we do
on these newsgroups and on word.mvps.org (which is owned by MVPs, not MS) is
done in our spare time, which is limited just like (presumably) yours.
Redesigning the entire site ­ which we are well aware needs doing ­ is a
massive job and it will have to wait until one of us can commit to it. Do
you think the little time we have available would be better spent answering
questions on these newsgroups or redesigning a website which is fully
accessible, even if awkward to use from a particular browser?

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice ­ or use another browser.)
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[John McGhie]

I'm the webmaster: here: have a username and password and YOU fix the
website You will receive exactly the same payment as I do for the
task: $0.00. There are 1,500 pages: can you have them all fixed by
next Saturday, please?

That site has rendered properly in every known browser on the web
since 1997. All except one: Safari. According to our logs, Safari
is one of the minor players in page visits (well, it would be,
wouldn't it... our pages don't work in it ...)

According to another website to which I have access to the logs, 91
per cent of visits come from some flavour of Internet Explorer, the
rest come from FireFox. Safari hits are around 0.89 per cent. You
wanna re-code and re-test 1,500 pages that work fine in every other
browser to support 0.89 per cent of the traffic, be my guest

Safari has had a bug for the past few years: it won't reload the third
frame from a Java Script. You figure out how to change the java
Script so Safari will load the page and we'll happily add it.

Just to underline the point: there are only two people working on that
site: myself, and Beth. We do our best, but we both have day jobs,
and it's not working for Microsoft. The server itself is paid for out
of his own money by Felix Kasza, a Windows MVP. He pays for the
hosting, and the bandwidth too...

Now: exactly how much more would you like for free??

Cheers

 

[John McGhie]

The site is written in absolutely standard HTML 4.0 against the
public
W3C DTD for HTML 4.0 Transitional.

I am no web expert, but it reports 19 errors for

http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/RemoveReinstall.htm

including no DOCTYPE.

We said it was coded in accordance with that DOCTYPE, we never said it
was coded "perfectly" for that doctype

Note that if you remove the frame junk, you seem to avoid
the annoying issues, e.g.,

http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/RemoveReinstallContent.htm

That's a bug! There's supposed to be a JavaScript at the bottom
of that page that will chuck you straight out again if you try that.
We got thoroughly sick of commercial websites stealing our content and
"wrapping" it in their own add-filled frames, so we installed a
framebouncer on the page.

It would be great if you supplied this kind of link in the future for
us Safari users.

Well, we think it would be great if you used FireFox

It's a balance; where do we spend our effort? In here helping users,
or out there slaving over a hot web editor. I choose "here". You are
chosing to use the only one of 47 browsers the pages don't work in.
Terribly sorry: perhaps the MacFixIt website would be more to your
liking?

Cheers

 

[googmeister]

Sorry, didn't mean to ruffle any feathers. My point was only

* The site claims to be "absolutely standard HTML 4.0", but
it is not, so it should not advertise itself as such.

* The large majority of users who click a link from an article
about Word for OS X will be using a browser for which
your site doesn't work (regardless of who is to blame).

* You MVPs deserve a heck of a lot of credit for compiling
such a huge amount of useful information. It's a terrific
service, and Microsoft *ought* to pay you for your time
since you add alot of value to their products!

I understand now that the frames-based website was designed
mainly for Windows users a long time ago, and it's probably too
much work to fix now. It's a shame because you will lose not
only alot of Safari users (maybe not a big deal), but also Google
users (since the frames make your site much less likely to get
indexed).

PPS. Do you really have only a *single* browser on your system?

I have four installed, but prefer to use Sarfari.

Is that a common situation?

Probably. Why would a typical OS X user want to use more
than one? I'd be surprised if many even install a second one.

 

[Michelle]

Sorry, didn't mean to ruffle any feathers. My point was only

* The site claims to be "absolutely standard HTML 4.0", but
it is not, so it should not advertise itself as such.

* The large majority of users who click a link from an article
about Word for OS X will be using a browser for which
your site doesn't work (regardless of who is to blame).

I'm a Mac user that has changed her default browser to Firefox--it's a
lot more customizable.

* You MVPs deserve a heck of a lot of credit for compiling
such a huge amount of useful information. It's a terrific
service, and Microsoft *ought* to pay you for your time
since you add alot of value to their products!

I understand now that the frames-based website was designed
mainly for Windows users a long time ago, and it's probably too
much work to fix now. It's a shame because you will lose not
only alot of Safari users (maybe not a big deal), but also Google
users (since the frames make your site much less likely to get
indexed).


I have four installed, but prefer to use Sarfari.


Probably. Why would a typical OS X user want to use more
than one? I'd be surprised if many even install a second one.

I actually have 4 browsers installed and use them all at different
times. Most of the time I use Firefox. I use Netscape Communicator
when I want to play around with creating a web page--it's the only
"composer" I can afford. And I use Internet Explorer for those few
pages (my bank's being one of them) that won't open properly in
ANYTHING else. Safari is just my back up when Firefox is being a pain.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Sorry, didn't mean to ruffle any feathers. My point was only

* The site claims to be "absolutely standard HTML 4.0", but
it is not, so it should not advertise itself as such.

I'll let John respond to that one.

* The large majority of users who click a link from an article
about Word for OS X will be using a browser for which
your site doesn't work (regardless of who is to blame).

True, and we do our best to warn them.

* You MVPs deserve a heck of a lot of credit for compiling
such a huge amount of useful information. It's a terrific
service, and Microsoft *ought* to pay you for your time
since you add alot of value to their products!

But if they paid us, we'd have to be nice to them . Thanks for the
thought, though.

I understand now that the frames-based website was designed
mainly for Windows users a long time ago, and it's probably too
much work to fix now. It's a shame because you will lose not
only alot of Safari users (maybe not a big deal), but also Google
users (since the frames make your site much less likely to get
indexed).

Did you try a Google search? I just searched for Microsoft Word Mac and
we're the #9 result! Unfortunately, they've indexed the "real" home page
instead of the redirect page which warns about Safari. Phooey! Oh well,
you can't win 'em all.

By the way, the "real" home page has the frameset, not the redirect page.
But you're perfectly correct that the search engine spiders don't grok
framesets; it's just that so many people link to us that it seems not to
matter.

Beth

 

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

Hi:

Sorry, didn't mean to ruffle any feathers. My point was only

Yes, you did. I've been here a few years now, I recognise flame-bait when I
see it

* The site claims to be "absolutely standard HTML 4.0", but
it is not, so it should not advertise itself as such.

Please don't bandy words with me. I wrote that text: it says what it means:
The site is coded in absolutely standard HTML 4. If I had meant "The site
is PERFECTLY coded without any errors" that's what I would have written.
And THEN I would have been lying

* The large majority of users who click a link from an article
about Word for OS X will be using a browser for which
your site doesn't work (regardless of who is to blame).

No: It's actually a fraction of one per cent. Of the (it's between 7 and 9
per cent) of site visitors using Mac who click a link from an article, less
than ten per cent (0.89 per cent of all visitors...) will be using Safari.
The Safari bug that was reported to Apple two years ago during beta-testing
of OS X, and it affects several of the world's websites, of which ours
happens to be one.

* You MVPs deserve a heck of a lot of credit for compiling
such a huge amount of useful information. It's a terrific
service, and Microsoft *ought* to pay you for your time
since you add alot of value to their products!

Mmmm... Most MVPs would actually strongly disagree with payment, for this
reason: If Microsoft were paying us, they would then be able to control
what we say about their products. While they may enjoy that, neither we nor
you would like the result.

At the moment, I can freely acknowledge all of the bugs I know about in
Microsoft Word. I can freely recommend other products for tasks to which
Word is not suited. I can freely recommend the use of Apple computers (my
posts usually come from the Mac, not the PC...).

I have just last week (yet again) made myself extremely unpopular by
suggesting that someone very senior at Microsoft, talented though we all
agree he is, does not walk on water.

If Microsoft were paying: Well, you may have arrived here after looking at
the Microsoft site trying to get the information you get here. I make my
living in Word: I use it all day every day. I am a long-document specialist
(a technical writer by profession for the past 30 years). Experience like
that is seriously expensive if you have to "buy" it. In here, you can help
yourself, for free

I understand now that the frames-based website was designed
mainly for Windows users a long time ago, and it's probably too
much work to fix now. It's a shame because you will lose not
only alot of Safari users (maybe not a big deal), but also Google
users (since the frames make your site much less likely to get
indexed).

Well, in some ways that would not "matter" to us. In fact, the reverse --
if our site got fewer visitors, Felix would have to pay for less bandwidth
and I would get fewer complaints

Actually, frames don't seem to slow Google down much (because it indexes the
raw pages). Google usually seems to find new articles on the site within a
few hours. In fact, there is a bug in the Search mechanism on the site
which has been there for the past two years, and we can't work out how to
solve it. So I am seriously thinking of replacing our internal search
engine with Google

I have four installed, but prefer to use Sarfari.

I have IE, FireFox and Safari on the Mac, and IE and FireFox on the PC.
(Yeah, OK, I also have some bits of IE 7 on the PC -- it's going to be a
very nice browser when it comes out...)

I recently switched my default browser from FireFox back to Safari on the
Mac (because Safari loads quicker...). On the PC I am still varying:
FireFox is the default at the moment, but I use IE for the sites FireFox
doesn't handle well.

Probably. Why would a typical OS X user want to use more
than one? I'd be surprised if many even install a second one.

Yeah. My current plan for the Word site is to migrate the whole thing into
XML. XML is not yet quite common enough to make it a safe move, but I would
expect to be creating new pages in XML only by next year.

Sorry about that: but fiddling around with websites is not something I
enjoy. It's a chore... I would rather spend my playtime in here, helping
users. I did offer you that username and password -- are you sure you
wouldn't like to fix it all for me??

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 4 1209 1410

 

[jeffb996]

To all who have contributed to this thread...

I started reading it because I was curious about Cassie's original
problem. What I got instead was the clearest, most informative
explanation about browser, um, "variability" that has helped me work
through a couple of "can't read the website" problems that have
frustrated me for weeks.

This kind of open discussion, unfettered by corporate alliances, is the
very thing that makes computers and the Internet such a useful tool.
Just goes to show ya... Can't tell what you're gonna learn unless you
read the whole thread.

Most of all, thanks for the patience of the MVPs in continuing to
clearly answer the questions instead of cutting off the thread.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Thanks, Jeff. Much appreciated !

Cheers,

Beth