My Office application cannot start because Office is already in use

[elo]

I get this message whenever Word has been open for a few hours or so,
and Word closes down automatically. But this Mac is the only computer I
have, and there are no other Macs in my household, so I don't know
where the message came from. I have recently moved into a new house and
I think these messages may have started around that same time, so is it
possible that they could be caused by someone in the same neighbourhood
area having a Mac too?
I write a lot in Word and I am really afraid of losing important
documents.

 

[Barry Wainwright [MVP]]

It should only be happening if another copy of Office Mac is on the same
network USING THE SAME SERIAL NUMBER.

If yours is the only mac, is it possible that someone has piggy-backed onto
an unprotected wireless network and has downloaded office from your
application folder? If so, they may have copied much more sensitive
information than this!

 

[elo]

Thankyou for your reply.
I am not on a wireless network at home, and it has happened
occasionally when I am on my Mac elsewhere.
If this may still be what has happened, how do I go about dealing with
it?

 

[mmmmark]

Thankyou for your reply.
I am not on a wireless network at home, and it has happened
occasionally when I am on my Mac elsewhere.
If this may still be what has happened, how do I go about dealing with
it?

Could you possibly only have the "test drive" that comes on a new Mac? Have
you actually purchased Office?

If you bought this Mac new and it HAD the test drive, did you delete it
before you installed your purchased version of Word?

-Mark

 

[Jason]

I am having this same problem. I've had a Powermac G5 and a Powerbook
g4 with Office 2004 on them for about 2 years now. Never a problem.
However I just bought a Macbook and a mini, and sold my other machines.
I installed Office 2004 on both computers and upgraded to the latest
service pack right away. I think this was a mistake, because, now, when
both machines are on the wireless network, I can't use Office. It says
the same thing it is saying to you. But I've made sure that any office
applications are only working on one machine at a time, and still, it
doesn't work.

I also want to know what I can do about this. If Microsoft can't help,
I'm sure some kid somewhere has posted some code to type in and make
this stuff work. We just have to google around for it.

I'm pretty ticked off, because I'm feeling powerless right now, and I'm
one of the software industry's favorite people. I have fully licensed
and paid for versions of everything. I don't have time for exactly this
sort of headache dealing with pirated software. Of course that was
before I had to deal with the same headache from non-pirated software.
At this point, whats the difference to me?

 

[Barry Wainwright [MVP]]

Even when you have quit all the office apps, it may be that the database
daemon is still running. This could be enough to trigger the warning.

To make sure the database daemon quits with the last office app, turn off
notifications under the 'Entourage' menu - this will prevent you from
receiving calendar event alerts when entourage is not running though.