Mac Word 2008 Crashes

[MartaGo]

I have loaded Office 2008 onto a G4 running Leopard. Entourage, Excel, and PowerPoint work fine. Word opens but crashes when I try to delete a word, replace a word, or quit Word. I have reloaded Office 2008, deleted Office 2008, repeatedly. I deleted Word X on the original installation of Office 2008, but have had to reload it in order to do word processing. Any thoughts on how to make Word 2008 work?

 

[John McGhie]

Sadly, our thoughts on this are growing every day...

Try these:

OK, when you installed Word 2008, it imported some settings from Word 2004,
and I wish it hadn't, because that's what is causing this problem.

1) Quit all Microsoft applications.

2) Track down all instances of Normal template on your computer, and drag
them to your desktop. The file is called simply "Normal" and has no
extension.

3) Find and drag the file Normal.dotm to your desktop.

4) If the following files exist, Remove or rename them:

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Word Settings (10)

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Word Settings (11)

User/Library/Preferences/com.Microsoft.Word.plist

User/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2008 (the whole folder!)

5) Now re-start Word 2008 and it should be OK.

Be thorough with this, if you leave any of these files behind Word 2008 will
find them and won't replace them. Do it right and Word will construct a
new, clean, set of preferences and everything should now work.

Hope this helps

I have loaded Office 2008 onto a G4 running Leopard. Entourage, Excel, and
PowerPoint work fine. Word opens but crashes when I try to delete a word,
replace a word, or quit Word. I have reloaded Office 2008, deleted Office
2008, repeatedly. I deleted Word X on the original installation of Office
2008, but have had to reload it in order to do word processing. Any thoughts
on how to make Word 2008 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, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Marta,

Did you delete Office using the Remove Office tool? If not, you may well
have left behind corrupt preferences.

The Remove Office tool is here: ~/Applications/Microsoft Office
2008/Additional Tools/Remove Office. Use it to get rid of *all* previous
versions of Office (unless you need them). Then reinstall Office 2008.

Next double-check to be sure you have none of the following preference
files:

Home/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Word Settings (10)
HD/OS 9 System Folder/Preferences/Microsoft/ Word Settings (9)
HD/OS 9 System Folder/Preferences/Microsoft/ Word Settings (8)

If you do, either trash them (and empty the trash) or rename them.

Now ... relaunch Word. If it still crashes, test your Normal template as
described here: <http://word.mvps.org/Mac/MacWordNormal.html>

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

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/Mac/WordMacHome.html>
My Site: <http://www.bethrosengard.com>

 

[amphioxus.philip]

Attempt 1: I wiped all the designated files. After a day of cooperation, Word 2008 (Mac 10.6.8) crashed, more frequently.

Attempt 2: I tried solution 2, first the 'Remove Office Tool,' and then a complete reinstall of Office 2008. Word crashed this morning. When I don't use Zotero, it never crashes.

Solution 3? I have ordered Office 2011. We will see. Are there fewer problems with it?

Question: I'm working on a few documents that had endnotes before I started using Zotero. Does Word/Zotero handle this mix? If not well, what is the correction?

Zotero is otherwise great, phenomenal, invaluable.

~Philip, frustrated

 

[amphioxus.philip]

PS: One more uneducated hint, just in case it helps you dedicated persons figure out what must be frustrating you also:

Twice, Flash Player has quit at the same time. Plug-in Shockwave Flash 11.3.300.257. Word crashed once during its update, and several times before and after the update.

Total, about 8 crashes this week. One since reinstall of Word 2008.

Add-ons: Firefox 13. Python disabled. Zot 3.0.7. Zot Word for Mac Integration 3.5.4. bookmarks-deiconizer 2.3.

 

[amphioxus.philip]

Attempt 3: I purchased Office 2011 for Mac. I again used the 'Remove Office Tool.' If I insert a Zotero citation, word crashes--not immediately, but when the mini wakes up after sleeping.

(And I don't even like Word 2011. What a waste!) Maybe I just have to get used to recovered documents.

~Philip

 

[Michael Vilain]

Attempt 3: I purchased Office 2011 for Mac. I again used the 'Remove Office
Tool.' If I insert a Zotero citation, word crashes--not immediately, but when
the mini wakes up after sleeping.

(And I don't even like Word 2011. What a waste!) Maybe I just have to get
used to recovered documents.

~Philip

Have you tried Solution 4? Buy Office 2012 and run it under emulation
on MacOS.

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/

Or run Windows via Bootcamp with Office 2012 installed.

Or buy a VM and run full Windows with Office

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/21252/parallels-desktop
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23593/vmware-fusion

You'll have to buy an OEM version of Windows 7 and Office to run in a VM
or Bootcamp.