Office 2004 creates problems with Mac Mail

[Jim Davis]

I installed Office 2004 on a Mac G4 running O/S 10.3.5. I did not
install Entourage. I installed Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Messenger.
As soon as I installed Office 2004 I started having problems with Mac
Mail.

When I receive an e-mail from someone, I have no problem reading it.
However when I hit reply and the window comes up to type my reply
around the incoming message, the incoming message has turned to total
gobbleygook. It is still in regular characters but they make no sense.

Additionally, when I get incoming e-mail, my Mac Mail icon in the
dock has a superscript that shows how many e-mails are in my inbox.
However, this number is always higher than what is actually in my
in-box. For example, if I have one incoming message, the icon in the
dock always shows I have three. As soon as I open the incoming mail,
the superscript number goes away so I know there are not two other
incoming e-mails hiding someplace that I haven't seen.

I also have a site that I visit called State of Insanity. Some friends
of mine and I have a private forum there where we visit. Occasionally,
the messages in this forum appear unreadable. I haven't seen a clear
pattern as to when this occurs. Sometimes it is fine and other times I
can't read it. This also started after I installed Office 2004.

I am presuming that the fonts that got installed in conjunction with
Office are somehow doing this but I really don't see how and haven't a
clue how to fix it.

I have not installed any other new software so I am positive this is a
result of Office 2004.

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi,

Try running Apple's Disk Utility First Aid and repair file permissions.
It may help.

-Jim

 

[Jim Davis]

Jim:

Rebooting Mail seems to have cleared it up. And I no longer think the
problem is with Microsoft Office. About the same time this problem
started occurring, my Mac guru was messing around with my Font
Suitcase and got some of the Helvetica fonts I use out of my system,
which I didn't discover until today. I have Helvetic as my default
font for Mail and for my Internet Browser and I believe that whatever
he did to my fonts is causing the problem. He is coming by today to
try and get everything back the way it was.

Jim Davis

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi Jim,

Glad to hear that things worked out, and I'm also glad that you took the
time to explain what happened so that others will benefit from your
experience.

-Jim