Microsoft Office problems

[jajabinx]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel I am running OS Snow Leopard (10.6.3) on a Mac Pro Quad Core Intel machine.

The problem I have is with ALL Microsoft Office 2008 applications though the worst is with Excel.
Word, Excel, Entourage and PowerPoint all are very slow to quit - something like 3-5 minutes and while they are trying to quit, you can see a message in the "force quit" box that the "application is not responding". All MS Office applications have become unstable and tend to crash unexpectedly. This does not happen on any particular file though some files have been so bad that I have opened them using iWork Numbers or Pages and then converted back to Excel or Word.

The worst problem with Excel (I think this started after the last MS office upgrade) is that the cells have become unstable. When you start typing something in, it suddenly disappears. Using formulas takes forever as the data keeps vanishing.

My workaround at the moment is to open MS Office in Parallels and work in Windows 7. This of course is not ideal.

I should say that I also have MS Office on my laptop (MacBook) and my G5 and it runs perfectly well though I haven't upgraded them to Snow Leopard which may explain why no problems.

If anyone has had similar issues and can suggest how to resolve this without reinstalling everything, I would be eternally grateful. I have already uninstalled and reinstalled MS Office to no avail.

 

[Bob Greenblatt [MVP]]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor:
Intel I am running OS Snow Leopard (10.6.3) on a Mac Pro Quad Core
Intel machine.

The problem I have is with ALL Microsoft Office 2008 applications
though the worst is with Excel.
Word, Excel, Entourage and PowerPoint all are very slow to quit -
something like 3-5 minutes and while they are trying to quit, you can
see a message in the "force quit" box that the "application is not
responding". All MS Office applications have become unstable and tend
to crash unexpectedly. This does not happen on any particular file
though some files have been so bad that I have opened them using iWork
Numbers or Pages and then converted back to Excel or Word.

The worst problem with Excel (I think this started after the last MS
office upgrade) is that the cells have become unstable. When you start
typing something in, it suddenly disappears. Using formulas takes
forever as the data keeps vanishing.

My workaround at the moment is to open MS Office in Parallels and work
in Windows 7. This of course is not ideal.

I should say that I also have MS Office on my laptop (MacBook) and my
G5 and it runs perfectly well though I haven't upgraded them to Snow
Leopard which may explain why no problems.

If anyone has had similar issues and can suggest how to resolve this
without reinstalling everything, I would be eternally grateful. I have
already uninstalled and reinstalled MS Office to no avail.

Well, there is something fishy with your configuration. And, regardless
of your experience with Windows, uninstalling/reinstallng Macintosh
programs usually does not help anything, and may make things worse.

After installation, have you repaired permissions? Have you used Font
Manager to resolve duplicate fonts?

Most of us are having absolutely no problems using Office 2008 in snow leopard.

 

[jajabinx]

>
>
> Well, there is something fishy with your configuration. And, regardless
> of your experience with Windows, uninstalling/reinstallng Macintosh
> programs usually does not help anything, and may make things worse.
>
> After installation, have you repaired permissions? Have you used Font
> Manager to resolve duplicate fonts?
>
> Most of us are having absolutely no problems using Office 2008 in snow leopard.
> --
> (e-mail address removed)
>

I have repaired permissions and used Suitcase fusion to disable all but the system fonts. Also check with Font Doctor for duplicates and all tests went through OK. Is there some way that I can erase the font cache used by MS Office? What is Font Manager? Any other suggestions?

 

[jajabinx]

> I have repaired permissions and used Suitcase fusion to disable all but the system fonts. Also check with Font Doctor for duplicates and all tests went through OK. Is there some way that I can erase the font cache used by MS Office? What is Font Manager? Any other suggestions?

Another thing I tried was to restart the computer from a cloned disc with Leopard (cloned before I upgraded to Snow L). I launched Excel from the apps folder on the Snow Leopard disc and no problem.

Would really appreciate some advice.

 

[John_McGhie_[MVP]]

OK, the issue is that you have done too many things all at once and the
system is in a muddle. Eventually we all have to slow down and make one
change at a time. Of course, we can continue to race around blowing things
up for as long as it's fun

In your case, it's difficult to say what is wrong until we get the system
into a known state. I suspect there is more than one problem there, but we
need to get it onto a stable baseline before we see the remaining problem.

Chances are quite high that your problems have been caused by trying to
migrate files from other computers. The Apple "Migration Tool" should be
re-named "The Train Wreck" because it has a similar effect on complex modern
applications.

Start with the following procedure: Do it exactly as written, don't omit
any steps, and no going out to "other" disks, or trying to bring anything
back from old backups. Any other disks should be disconnected while you do
this:

This is the "Scorched Earth" fix. Whatever it is, if it's caused by Office,
this should fix it. You need to do a full "Remove and Replace". Installing
has no effect at all unless you first remove.

1) Track down all instances of pre-2008 Normal template on your computer,
and drag them to your desktop. The file is called simply "Normal" and has
no extension.

2) Run the Remove Office tool from
</Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Additional Tools/Remove Office>

3) Find and delete the file Normal.dotm. Unless you have moved it, it
should be in
~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates/

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

Delete all files with names starting com.microsoft.* from
~/Library/Preferences/
Delete ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/ (the whole folder!)
Delete ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/ (the whole folder!)

5) Ensure that your copy of OS X is right up-to-date with the latest patches
issued by Apple. Run Software Update until it finds nothing!

6) Now insert the CD and install Office 2008.

7) Then Repair Permissions with Disk Utility.

8) Now start Font Book and "Resolve Duplicates". Office installs some later
versions of fonts already in place: you must get the duplicates out, or Word
will crash.

9) Then re-install or reapply the 12.2.0 and 12.2.3 and 12.2.4 updates, in
that order.

10) Repair permissions again.

11) Now shut down, wait for the power to go off, then re-start. This fires
the Unix clean-up scripts.

Now try: Once we have the system in this "known, stable state" we can then
diagnose and fix anything else that may be wrong. There is a question-mark
in my mind as to whether you have sufficient RAM. You need at least 4 GB.
When you are running a virtual machine, you can get problems with the native
applications because there's not enough free RAM available. That may
explain the slowness.

Hope this helps

Another thing I tried was to restart the computer from a cloned disc with
Leopard (cloned before I upgraded to Snow L). I launched Excel from the apps
folder on the Snow Leopard disc and no problem.

Would really appreciate some advice.

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]