MacBook Pro with a new weird AWFUL bug

[lessig]

So since moving to my MacBook Pro, I've had a really damaging bug in
Word that appears randomly and with great destruction. I will be
working on a large file, try to save it, and I get the spinning wheel
of death. Worse, while it is waiting in Word, it is shutting down other
programs, including finder, and the result is my fonts are all screwed
up. I have to repair the disk to be able to function normally again.
Anyone seen anything like this?

 

[aatbg]

We are having exactly the same problem on our 2 new Intel iMacs, with
no real relief, although installing the latest Office update seemed to
slightly lessen the problem. I will be SO grateful for any advice -
but my guess is we'll have to wait until the next Universal version of
Office comes out.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Since other people are using Office 2004 successfully on Universal machines
of various kinds, I would have to think that there's some conflict in your
systems that the two of you may share.

One thing that sounds particularly odd to my is the statement that other
programs, including the Finder, are being shut down; I can't help thinking
that a virus might be involved, regardless of how unlikely that is. Does
either of you have an anti-virus program? Have you done a deep scan?

If it's not a virus, then the first thing I would do if it were my machine
is an uninstall and reinstall. And I'd do it thoroughly, per the
instructions at the following URL. Normally, I wouldn't suggest this
measure first, but what you're seeing is pretty extreme.

<http://word.mvps.org/Mac/RemoveReinstall.html>

If that doesn't help, I would try other troubleshooting procedures, like
testing for third-party conflicts, for instance. You'll find more
information here:

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

Also, Angela, are you seeing the exact symptoms as lessig? Does this only
happen with large docs? Any other time?

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

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

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

 

[Gavin Lawrie]

We are having exactly the same problem on our 2 new Intel iMacs, with
no real relief, although installing the latest Office update seemed to
slightly lessen the problem. I will be SO grateful for any advice -
but my guess is we'll have to wait until the next Universal version of
Office comes out.

This sounds like the Font Crash problem Word 2004 has got when running
on MacIntel machines. Happens on both iMacs and portables. You can
read more about it by looking for the following thread - "Word 2004 +
Macintel + Some Adobe OpenType Fonts = Crash on save"

Unfortunately while there are some work-arounds, and the problem is
increasingly well defined, there has been no word from MS or Apple
about who will take ownership of problem, let alone whether a fix is
due. The crash itself is caused by something in Word triggering a
crash in an apple / OS X utility called (?) ATSUI - and it is this
crashing and restarting in an endless loop that seems to crash other
apps and throw you out to the log in prompt. What it is doing and why
only on MacIntel not PPC is a mystery it seems.

One thing that you can try is removing non-standard fonts from your
Font folder (either manually, or via a Font management programme). It
seems that simply doing this can fix problem such that you canwork on
any size file (but is awkward if you need the font...). How to tell
which fonts is not clear - trial and error seems to be the only way.
Antoher fix is to only work on v.small files (sort of one-page
efforts), as taking file over some file-size limit (about 1500
characters) also can make the system crash in same way (with Fonts
active).

Hope this helps.

Gavin Lawrie

 

[uernst]

I had the same problem, and worked with Microsoft support. Fixing disk
permissions seems to help. But I also discovered that the problem went
away when I changed font sizes. All intermediate sizes (10.5 pt. for
example) would crash the program (and other programs and the sometimes
the Finder). When I replaced that (with 11 pt., for example), I could
save without difficulties. I don't know whether that's a universal
solution, but it worked for me.

I do have serious problems with Word under 10.4.6, on all of my Macs,
including an "ancient" Titanium: formatting goes haywire. Once I change
something in the text, say italics, the entire style will change.
Hitting command-z seems to return the rest of the style (the
non-selected part) back to the original, but not always. At the same
time, Word will add returns to footnote separators and headers and
footers, randomly but consistently, as far as I can tell.

Formatting for tables using the grid or the alignment command simply
didn't work; for example, aligning the entires in a column right,
didn't produce anything. I could align the entries one by one, hitting
command-z after every alignement command.

I'm reinstalling Panther on one of the Macs to be able to work with
Word as before.

 

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

Right. Comments inline...

I had the same problem, and worked with Microsoft support. Fixing disk
permissions seems to help. But I also discovered that the problem went
away when I changed font sizes. All intermediate sizes (10.5 pt. for
example) would crash the program (and other programs and the sometimes
the Finder). When I replaced that (with 11 pt., for example), I could
save without difficulties. I don't know whether that's a universal
solution, but it worked for me.

This is very valuable information. It lends fuel to my suspicion that this
is an ATSUI crash.

I do have serious problems with Word under 10.4.6, on all of my Macs,
including an "ancient" Titanium: formatting goes haywire. Once I change
something in the text, say italics, the entire style will change.

This one is easy: You have left "Automatically update style" turned on.
For each style you have in use, use Format>Style and turn "Automatically
update style" OFF. Otherwise, if you make any change to any paragraph
formatted with that style, the change will update the style and affect all
other paragraphs with the style. If you hit Normal style, the entire
document will inherit the change.

Formatting for tables using the grid or the alignment command simply
didn't work; for example, aligning the entires in a column right,
didn't produce anything. I could align the entries one by one, hitting
command-z after every alignement command.

If you have a Table Style applied, all formatting in the table is under
control of the table style. Select the whole table and apply style "Table
Normal" to get rid of it. You should then be able to format within whole
columns normally.

Personally, I prefer to create a series of paragraph styles to be used in
tables. Table Heading, Table Body and Table Bullet, for example. These
give me fine-grained control over what is happening.

I did not quite understand what you meant by the "Grid or alignment
command". Tables will only respond to the graphics alignment command if you
format the table as a floating table, by setting its
Table>Properties>Wrapping to "Around". That turns the table into a graphics
object that will respond to graphics commands. I prefer not to do that:
table corruption seems to follow soon after.

I'm reinstalling Panther on one of the Macs to be able to work with
Word as before.

Yeah, I'm in Panther and I won't go up until they get the bugs out. Word
2004 was designed and built for OS 10.3, and will operate reliably in
10.3.9. Word X was designed and built around OS 10.1. There's an upgrade
that will make it stable in 10.3, but I get the feeling that it's best not
to take it up any further than that.

Hope this helps

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <john@mcghie.name>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Gavin Lawrie]

I had the same problem, and worked with Microsoft support. Fixing disk
permissions seems to help. But I also discovered that the problem went
away when I changed font sizes. All intermediate sizes (10.5 pt. for
example) would crash the program (and other programs and the sometimes
the Finder). When I replaced that (with 11 pt., for example), I could
save without difficulties. I don't know whether that's a universal
solution, but it worked for me.

We can't reproduce this as a fix here - all our fonts are
whole-numbers, and we get the crashing even if the font sizes are
changed (to other whole numbers). Maybe some whole numbers are better
than others? Perhaps someone who knows about such things could comment
on whether this might be so. Fixing disk permissions doesn't help our
problem either (nor does completely reinstalling Tiger, back-grading to
earlier versions of OS X and / or earlier versions of Office 2004.
Unfortunately, since we are running MacIntels, we can't run Panther.

Does anyone know if the forthcoming 10.4.7 update to OS X patches this
problem? Right now we are on verge of moving document production on
MacIntels over to Pages (which works surprisingly well on imported Word
2004 docs): not something we are keen on, as we will have to move our
PPC machines over too (i.e. fixing a problem they don't have...).
Silence from both MS and Apple (apart from a bit of crafty indirect
finger pointing on both sides) means that (as far as I can tell) so far
no one has actually admited the problem exists, let alone that they
might be trying to fix it. Big pity.

 

[Gavin Lawrie]

There is another solution you could consider. You have a whole bunch of
Office Professional disks lying around there, right? From the PPC machines?
One of the disks in each set is a copy of Windows XP. With a licence key


Hunt around in the remainders bin of any software house (or eBay...) and
you'll pick up a Word 2000 disk for about forty bucks. With a licence
key...

Hi,

Thanks for your helpful comments. I have given the winXP option some
consideration - we do have unused win XP licenses for the MacIntel
machines which replaced PPC ones. I also have a copy of Parallels
Desktop that I've been hoping to try out, but not yet had a chance to.
But messages in other fora indicate that WinXP licenses supplied with
VPC *only* work with VPC. So it sounds like putting WinXP on one of
our MacIntels means getting an extra license for Win 2000 / XP etc. We
are also aware of irritating quirks that make Office 2000 not quite
compatible with Office 2004 (we know - as we used to have a mixed win /
mac environment and had to have duplicate templates for Word and PPT to
reflect foibles of the two platforms...

I'm going to wait until 10.4.7 breaks. If that doesn't fix it, we'll
try the parallels diesktop and see if that plays better or worse than
using Pages and make a decision then.

Gavin Lawrie

 

[picardmeister]

I'm going to wait until 10.4.7 breaks.

10.4.7 is out now.

 

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

Hi Gavin:

Well, I haven't tried it, but I cannot see why it wouldn't work: the key is
being validated by Windows XP, not by VPC...

I specifically recommended Word 2000 because it is the *most* compatible PC
version to Word 2004. Anything older or younger will give problems: but
Office 2004 is right in the zone.

Cheers

Hi,

Thanks for your helpful comments. I have given the winXP option some
consideration - we do have unused win XP licenses for the MacIntel
machines which replaced PPC ones. I also have a copy of Parallels
Desktop that I've been hoping to try out, but not yet had a chance to.
But messages in other fora indicate that WinXP licenses supplied with
VPC *only* work with VPC. So it sounds like putting WinXP on one of
our MacIntels means getting an extra license for Win 2000 / XP etc. We
are also aware of irritating quirks that make Office 2000 not quite
compatible with Office 2004 (we know - as we used to have a mixed win /
mac environment and had to have duplicate templates for Word and PPT to
reflect foibles of the two platforms...

I'm going to wait until 10.4.7 breaks. If that doesn't fix it, we'll
try the parallels diesktop and see if that plays better or worse than
using Pages and make a decision then.

Gavin Lawrie

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <john@mcghie.name>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[lessig]

10.4.7 is out now.

10.4.7 doesn't help. Nor does using a "short" document help (me at
least). Nor changing the font size to a whole number. Nor using a
standard font. Nor "saving as" a different file. The only thing in the
end I could do was to copy the text into a new document, and save that
-- after the devouring save function had removed all but the core Apple
fonts from my system (until I restrart).

This is insanely frustrating. I would happily switch to a different
word processor, though when writing columns, I need to use the
track-changes function in Word. Same with a book I must finish in a
week -- I've hit this problem three times now, forcing me to rebuild
the book. This is the second time I've hit one of these hugely
destructive software problems with Apple in the last six months, only
to be left with silence by Apple. The last time, my wife's iPhoto
library got corrupted after a software update. Literally hundreds of
hours spent organizing thousands of photos was lost, and after weeks,
no solution, or even acknowledgment of the scores who were reporting
the problem, by Apple.

 

[uernst]

Much appreciate the comments and suggestions. For the time being, I'll
switch to Pages for the MacIntel and wait for something to happen to
fix the Word problems. And I'll keep working in Word on th PPC
machines.

Anyway, many thanks to all.

 

[SC]

Hi All~

I have been having similar problems with my new Macbook when I am using
word: formatting gone awry, refusing to save, unexpectedly quitting
when I try to save or just for no reason, telling me documents are
already open when they are not, telling me that I have too many
documents open when I have 4 or 5 (which should be fine for a powerful
machine like this!). And yesterday my screen refused to come back from
sleep for 30 minutes! I talked with Apple Care yesterday and ran disk
utility, etc. but am not feeling hopeful.

I have 10.4.6 and always write in 12 pt. times new roman and would be
willing to try something else if people could suggest a font that seems
to work. But it sounds like the issues may be deeper than that. Any
advice? Could anyone explain in plain speak what exactly Pages or
Parallel is and how they may help? I'm not much in the know, but am
trying to finish up a dissertation, so the option of working in small
files won't cut it. Thanks!

SC

Much appreciate the comments and suggestions. For the time being, I'll
switch to Pages for the MacIntel and wait for something to happen to
fix the Word problems. And I'll keep working in Word on th PPC
machines.

Anyway, many thanks to all.

Right. Comments inline...

I had the same problem, and worked with Microsoft support. Fixing disk
permissions seems to help. But I also discovered that the problem went
away when I changed font sizes. All intermediate sizes (10.5 pt. for
example) would crash the program (and other programs and the sometimes
the Finder). When I replaced that (with 11 pt., for example), I could
save without difficulties. I don't know whether that's a universal
solution, but it worked for me.

This is very valuable information. It lends fuel to my suspicion that this
is an ATSUI crash.

I do have serious problems with Word under 10.4.6, on all of my Macs,
including an "ancient" Titanium: formatting goes haywire. Once I change
something in the text, say italics, the entire style will change.

This one is easy: You have left "Automatically update style" turned on.
For each style you have in use, use Format>Style and turn "Automatically
update style" OFF. Otherwise, if you make any change to any paragraph
formatted with that style, the change will update the style and affect all
other paragraphs with the style. If you hit Normal style, the entire
document will inherit the change.

Formatting for tables using the grid or the alignment command simply
didn't work; for example, aligning the entires in a column right,
didn't produce anything. I could align the entries one by one, hitting
command-z after every alignement command.

If you have a Table Style applied, all formatting in the table is under
control of the table style. Select the whole table and apply style "Table
Normal" to get rid of it. You should then be able to format within whole
columns normally.

Personally, I prefer to create a series of paragraph styles to be used in
tables. Table Heading, Table Body and Table Bullet, for example. These
give me fine-grained control over what is happening.

I did not quite understand what you meant by the "Grid or alignment
command". Tables will only respond to the graphics alignment command if you
format the table as a floating table, by setting its
Table>Properties>Wrapping to "Around". That turns the table into a graphics
object that will respond to graphics commands. I prefer not to do that:
table corruption seems to follow soon after.

I'm reinstalling Panther on one of the Macs to be able to work with
Word as before.

Yeah, I'm in Panther and I won't go up until they get the bugs out. Word
2004 was designed and built for OS 10.3, and will operate reliably in
10.3.9. Word X was designed and built around OS 10.1. There's an upgrade
that will make it stable in 10.3, but I get the feeling that it's best not
to take it up any further than that.

Hope this helps

John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh] wrote:
Yes, we have several reports of unpredictable and destructive crashes
affecting Word on MacIntels.

Regrettably, they appear to be of random cause. The problems do not seem to
affect all users.

What we need next is lots and lots of detail about exactly what was
happening just before the crash. I personally believe this may be the ATSUI
crash you are experiencing. If so, it would be very helpful to know which
fonts were in use in the document (please: the full detail including the
publisher of the font and the date and version number of the font file).

If we can get enough detail, they may be able to find and fix this one.

If they can find this one, I suspect they will fix it well before the
Universal Binary appears. Office will not appear as a Universal Binary
until the next version of Mac Office, and that's still a long way away.

Cheers

On 23/6/06 6:14 AM, in article
(e-mail address removed), "aatbg"

We are having exactly the same problem on our 2 new Intel iMacs, with
no real relief, although installing the latest Office update seemed to
slightly lessen the problem. I will be SO grateful for any advice -
but my guess is we'll have to wait until the next Universal version of
Office comes out.

lessig wrote:
So since moving to my MacBook Pro, I've had a really damaging bug in
Word that appears randomly and with great destruction. I will be
working on a large file, try to save it, and I get the spinning wheel
of death. Worse, while it is waiting in Word, it is shutting down other
programs, including finder, and the result is my fonts are all screwed
up. I have to repair the disk to be able to function normally again.
Anyone seen anything like this?


--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <john@mcghie.name>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <john@mcghie.name>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Gavin Lawrie]

I have 10.4.6 and always write in 12 pt. times new roman and would be
willing to try something else if people could suggest a font that seems
to work. But it sounds like the issues may be deeper than that. Any
advice? Could anyone explain in plain speak what exactly Pages or
Parallel is and how they may help? I'm not much in the know, but am
trying to finish up a dissertation, so the option of working in small
files won't cut it. Thanks!

I have 10.4.6 and always write in 12 pt. times new roman and would be
willing to try something else if people could suggest a font that seems
to work. But it sounds like the issues may be deeper than that. Any
advice? Could anyone explain in plain speak what exactly Pages or
Parallel is and how they may help? I'm not much in the know, but am
trying to finish up a dissertation, so the option of working in small
files won't cut it. Thanks!

Pages is Apple's word-processor. It is part of the iWork offering -
find out more at the Apple Store (www.apple.com/store). It is broadly
similar to Word, and seems to open Word documents quite well - we see
only minor changes in some styles, but nothing totally horrid. If you
normally only write in simple fonts you should have no problems with
it. I think you can get a 30 day demo version from Apple. We like it
- the interface is different to Word's, but OK when you get used to it.

You can also try other Word-a-like packages. NeoOffice (from
http://www.neooffice.org/) provides a good Word look-a-like, but we've
not got much feel for how well it imports complex Word documents.
Simple low-format documents appear to import pretty well. NeoOffice is
free.

Parallels Desktop is a software package that runs on MacIntels and
allows you to create a Windows environment, into which you can then
install Windows software. If you have an un-used legit copy of Windows
and a copy of Word for Windows (of some vintage) you can in theory use
Parallels to run this stuff on your Mac. But it seems not all copies
of Windows will install on Parallels (e.g. versions sold with the
Virtual PC product after it was taken over by MS won't install on
anything other than VPC it seems), and buying a copy of windows and /
or Office seems very expensive compared to buying Pages.

Finally, some report that simply down-grading to Word 10 (i.e. the one
that ships in Office vX) is a good cure - as it doesn't use the bit of
OS X that is causing the Word bug at all. We've not tried this but
plan to: others report it works well (but that all the problems with Vx
- such as no long file name support) are there in stead.

Hope this helps.

Gavin Lawrie

 

[Hugh Watkins]

still learning my MacBook pro

I would use simple text
or Note Block in Win XP

for basic writng

I also use draft emails like today I was researching on a library
computer so ssaved my notes as a gamil draft

what are you using your machine for?

mine is for webmaster and email

interesting browser shoot out

Safari best for downloads
Firefox for all google stuff .. blogs etc
and
MS has abandoned MS IE for the MAc

not tried writely or google pages yet on the mac
http://hugh.watkins.googlepages.com/
url goes from gmail address

also there are online spread sheets
spreadsheets.google.com/


downloading phone cam photos by blue tooth was much better than on WIn
XP by cable

cheers !!!
Hugh W


new computer = new blog
http://mac-on-intel.blogspot.com/

daily blogs with new photos
http://snaps2006.blogspot.com/
http://slim2005.blogspot.com/

family history
http://hughw36.blogspot.com

Much appreciate the comments and suggestions. For the time being, I'll
switch to Pages for the MacIntel and wait for something to happen to
fix the Word problems. And I'll keep working in Word on th PPC
machines.

Anyway, many thanks to all.

Right. Comments inline...

I had the same problem, and worked with Microsoft support. Fixing disk
permissions seems to help. But I also discovered that the problem went
away when I changed font sizes. All intermediate sizes (10.5 pt. for
example) would crash the program (and other programs and the sometimes
the Finder). When I replaced that (with 11 pt., for example), I could
save without difficulties. I don't know whether that's a universal
solution, but it worked for me.

This is very valuable information. It lends fuel to my suspicion that this
is an ATSUI crash.

I do have serious problems with Word under 10.4.6, on all of my Macs,
including an "ancient" Titanium: formatting goes haywire. Once I change
something in the text, say italics, the entire style will change.

This one is easy: You have left "Automatically update style" turned on.
For each style you have in use, use Format>Style and turn "Automatically
update style" OFF. Otherwise, if you make any change to any paragraph
formatted with that style, the change will update the style and affect all
other paragraphs with the style. If you hit Normal style, the entire
document will inherit the change.

Formatting for tables using the grid or the alignment command simply
didn't work; for example, aligning the entires in a column right,
didn't produce anything. I could align the entries one by one, hitting
command-z after every alignement command.

If you have a Table Style applied, all formatting in the table is under
control of the table style. Select the whole table and apply style "Table
Normal" to get rid of it. You should then be able to format within whole
columns normally.

Personally, I prefer to create a series of paragraph styles to be used in
tables. Table Heading, Table Body and Table Bullet, for example. These
give me fine-grained control over what is happening.

I did not quite understand what you meant by the "Grid or alignment
command". Tables will only respond to the graphics alignment command if you
format the table as a floating table, by setting its
Table>Properties>Wrapping to "Around". That turns the table into a graphics
object that will respond to graphics commands. I prefer not to do that:
table corruption seems to follow soon after.

I'm reinstalling Panther on one of the Macs to be able to work with
Word as before.

Yeah, I'm in Panther and I won't go up until they get the bugs out. Word
2004 was designed and built for OS 10.3, and will operate reliably in
10.3.9. Word X was designed and built around OS 10.1. There's an upgrade
that will make it stable in 10.3, but I get the feeling that it's best not
to take it up any further than that.

Hope this helps

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

Yes, we have several reports of unpredictable and destructive crashes
affecting Word on MacIntels.

Regrettably, they appear to be of random cause. The problems do not seem to
affect all users.

What we need next is lots and lots of detail about exactly what was
happening just before the crash. I personally believe this may be the ATSUI
crash you are experiencing. If so, it would be very helpful to know which
fonts were in use in the document (please: the full detail including the
publisher of the font and the date and version number of the font file).

If we can get enough detail, they may be able to find and fix this one.

If they can find this one, I suspect they will fix it well before the
Universal Binary appears. Office will not appear as a Universal Binary
until the next version of Mac Office, and that's still a long way away.

Cheers

On 23/6/06 6:14 AM, in article
(e-mail address removed), "aatbg"


We are having exactly the same problem on our 2 new Intel iMacs, with
no real relief, although installing the latest Office update seemed to
slightly lessen the problem. I will be SO grateful for any advice -
but my guess is we'll have to wait until the next Universal version of
Office comes out.

lessig wrote:

So since moving to my MacBook Pro, I've had a really damaging bug in
Word that appears randomly and with great destruction. I will be
working on a large file, try to save it, and I get the spinning wheel
of death. Worse, while it is waiting in Word, it is shutting down other
programs, including finder, and the result is my fonts are all screwed
up. I have to repair the disk to be able to function normally again.
Anyone seen anything like this?

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <john@mcghie.name>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <john@mcghie.name>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[francis]

I am also suffering from this problem -- It affects all documents with
the ITC Avant Garde Postscript font in my case which is a real problem
as that's all of our standard project documents. I'm speaking of
hundreds of documents here so it's a real problem, and we don't have
time to modify everything.

The bad news is that our Publications department is reporting the same
problem with several PPC-based machines ... All of our problems here
have started within the last few weeks. Luckily my girlfriend (in
Publications) can fix it, but it's incredibly labourious -- it takes
her hours to clean out font caches, delete Normal.dot, repair
permissions etc. And it's only temporary -- after fixing my machine at
the weekend I've got it again after using Illustrator, but I could save
the troublesome documents yesterday.

A bit off-topic but I think Microsoft should develop a cut-down Word
from scratch and offer this "lite" version as an alternative. They have
added so many bells and whistles, that few people need or use, that the
underlying machine has become very creaky (e.g. uncontrolled
interference between auto-numbered entities such as headings and
lists).

cheers,
Richard

 

[SC]

Thanks for the clear explanations and suggestions Gavin. I may look
into Pages if I continue to have problems with Word.

On a related side note, I just recieved an e-mail advertisement from
Mac spouting that Microsoft Office works like a dream on all Mac
computers (with a picture of my macbook in the ad). I found this
pretty infuriating (and misleading) given all of the issues people seem
to be having with Word on these new machines. This ad came at a
particularly ironic time for me since I spoke with Mac a couple days
prior (when my computer yet again quit Word) to discuss the Word issue
and the intermittent buzzing eminating from my computer. I was told
that both issues were "software issues" and thus, not Mac's problem.
This seemed like a pretty paltry response given that I payed $200 for
the Apple Care plan. Anyway, sorry for the griping, but if anyone
hears if Apple is actually going to do something about this (like make
a patch or something), please let us know.

S

 

[Gavin Lawrie]

I'm speaking of
hundreds of documents here so it's a real problem, and we don't have
time to modify everything.

Hi Richard

Sorry to hear your having the problems too. We've not seen any
problems on PPC machines. We've got two fixes - either work on the
documents using Word 10 (the one in Office Vx) or use Pages 2 - we've
settled on Pages 2 as we implemented it before we were alerted to
option of using Vx. Pages 2 option works OK.

On a related note, just confirmation that todays 11.2.5 updated does
not fix the problem.

We remain hopeful that someone will do something to fix this problem -
Richard is just one of many who have been put in a very awkward
situation because of this.

 

[Hugh Watkins]

Thanks for the clear explanations and suggestions Gavin. I may look
into Pages if I continue to have problems with Word.

On a related side note, I just recieved an e-mail advertisement from
Mac spouting that Microsoft Office works like a dream on all Mac
computers (with a picture of my macbook in the ad). I found this
pretty infuriating (and misleading) given all of the issues people seem
to be having with Word on these new machines. This ad came at a
particularly ironic time for me since I spoke with Mac a couple days
prior (when my computer yet again quit Word) to discuss the Word issue
and the intermittent buzzing eminating from my computer.

snip

whilst I was hanging around in the Apple Shop Bullring Birmigham
waitning fopr them to sort things out


a user came in with a MacBook which loudly buzzed intermittently

It was accepted as a hardware problem for repair ????????

Hugh W




--

new computer = new blog
http://mac-on-intel.blogspot.com/

daily blogs with new photos
http://snaps2006.blogspot.com/
http://slim2005.blogspot.com/

family history
http://hughw36.blogspot.com

 

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

Hi Hugh:

Yes. I understand there are two "flavours" of the buzzing. One is caused
by a software problem, the other can be a lose screw

Cheers

snip

whilst I was hanging around in the Apple Shop Bullring Birmigham
waitning fopr them to sort things out


a user came in with a MacBook which loudly buzzed intermittently

It was accepted as a hardware problem for repair ????????

Hugh W

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <john@mcghie.name>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410