Office 2004 SP1 - What did it Fix??

F

Fredrik Wahlgren

matt neuburg said:
It sure didn't fix some of the main bugs I know about.

For example, if you set the filter in the Revisions toolbar to show only
Comments, and there are no comments, then if you press the Next button
in the toolbar, Word will crash. I've performed this crash reliably
dozens of times, and every time a report has presumably gone to
Microsoft. It isn't fixed.

There's a major bug in VBA in the Range.New method where you supply
numbers for the range's position: if your document has any fields in it,
the range may end up in completely the wrong place. This isn't fixed.

I could rattle on and on, but my point is, don't make the
reverse-psychology mistake of assuming that something is fixed merely
because it is *not* listed at that URL. m.


--
matt neuburg, phd = (e-mail address removed), http://www.tidbits.com/matt/
AppleScript: The Definitive Guide
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596005571/somethingsbymatt
Read TidBITS! It's free and smart. http://www.tidbits.com

I haven't had this kind of Crash. Does the bug report offer a field in which
you can enter some kind of description?

/ Fredrik
 
J

JE McGimpsey

Note that it fixes more than the KB says. I'm reworking some of the bugs
I list on my site.

It sure didn't fix some of the main bugs I know about.

...

I could rattle on and on, but my point is, don't make the
reverse-psychology mistake of assuming that something is fixed merely
because it is *not* listed at that URL. m.[/QUOTE]

Certainly wasn't trying to imply that all, or even most bugs are fixed.
However, there ARE some significant fixes (e.g. LoadPicture, XL's
Range.Copy, Userform Focus, etc.) that aren't listed in the KB.
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

It sure didn't fix some of the main bugs I know about.

For example, if you set the filter in the Revisions toolbar to show only
Comments, and there are no comments, then if you press the Next button
in the toolbar, Word will crash. I've performed this crash reliably
dozens of times, and every time a report has presumably gone to
Microsoft. It isn't fixed.

There's a major bug in VBA in the Range.New method where you supply
numbers for the range's position: if your document has any fields in it,
the range may end up in completely the wrong place. This isn't fixed.

I could rattle on and on, but my point is, don't make the
reverse-psychology mistake of assuming that something is fixed merely
because it is *not* listed at that URL. m.

Office 11.1.0 is not advertised as a major bug-fix release. It was announced
as a release that fixes security issues and stability, and also happens to
have some bug fixes, some of which are announced in that KB article and some
of which, as JE says, were not. The security issues are mostly "potential
holes" for possible exploits, none of which has occurred and now can'. You
won't notice anything. Some crashing bugs (rare circumstances) have been
fixed (the "stability" issues).

As far as other bugs go, it's the usual thing for an early service release:
they tried to fix bugs or nuisances that thousands of people have reported,
if they were easy enough to fix in time. For example, there have been
countless reports (several hundreds right here on the newsgroups, thousand
more via MS Error Reporting) about Entourage's icon bouncing repeatedly in
the Dock when there's a server error. That has been fixed. The Word errors
you report above, Matt, have probably only been reported by you and maybe a
couple of others. That wasn't enough to get them high priority, Anything to
do with VBA is specialist, and quite possibly difficult to fix, to boot.

MS apparently really is using the Error Reporting (MERP) to find bugs and to
prioritize. So do, everyone, keep sending in reports.

MS never announce update releases in advance. But I'm quite sure they are
planning more bug fix releases for 2004. 11.1.0 is not the end of it.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.
 
P

Phillip M. Jones, CE.T.

Hugh said:
Thanks for the post. At least now I know I'm not crazy. I'm getting
the same message. I have no idea what it means. So far it doesn't seem
to affect the way the program runs, except that I can no longer shut
down and walk away. Assuming that someone from Microsoft is reading
these, will there be a fix of the fix, or is there some way to delete
the module in which there is a compile error?

Dump any of the PDFMaker related files in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

replace them with folders with identical names. The same subject has
come up in the Adobe Acrobat newsgroups. I've posted several times in
the last month or two how to do it. It's these files casing these
strange error messages.

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |MEMBER:VPEA (LIFE) ETA-I, NESDA,ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112-1809 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto:p[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://home.kimbanet.com/~pjones/birthday/index.htm>
<http://vpea.exis.net>
 
P

Phillip M. Jones, CE.T.

The said:
Yes it does work...but what if we want the PDFMaker toolbar? Did SP1
“break” it until Adobe fixes it?


On 10/13/04 11:45, in article BD92C5CD.35E3%[email protected],



Hi Frank,

Another user reported that this error was due to the presence of the
PDFMaker add-in in the Excel Startup folder. Below is the procedure
to get
rid of it based on a workaround by J.E. McGimpsey. I would
appreciate it
very much if you would report back on whether or not this procedure
works
for you.

PdfMaker For me has never worked. Even in OS9. In OS9 it caused Word to
take Five minutes or more to load. On a G4-500 with 1.5GB of System RAM.

If you have OSX the PDFMaker is redundant. You can create PDF from the
print menu. And if you have acrobat to begin with you can simply choose
the Adobe PDF printer setup. so you have two way to create PDF's you
don't need a Third.

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |MEMBER:VPEA (LIFE) ETA-I, NESDA,ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112-1809 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto:p[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://home.kimbanet.com/~pjones/birthday/index.htm>
<http://vpea.exis.net>
 
P

Phillip M. Jones, CE.T.

The said:
So which component is broken – Excel or PDFMaker? The error is not
happening in Word or PowerPoint.


On 10/13/04 17:14, in article BD93130F.3601%[email protected],

Hi Hugh,

It has to do with the PDFMaker add-in. For a workaround, see the
previous
posts on this same thread.
PdfMaker

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |MEMBER:VPEA (LIFE) ETA-I, NESDA,ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112-1809 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto:p[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://home.kimbanet.com/~pjones/birthday/index.htm>
<http://vpea.exis.net>
 
P

Phillip M. Jones, CE.T.

Beth said:
The first person I responded to on this subject said it happened to him
in both Excel and Word (see “PDFMaker Template - Opinions?” thread). I
really don’t know where the fix needs to be made. It wouldn’t be Excel.
It could have something to do with the Office SP 1 installation. Or it
could be an Adobe problem. Sorry – no answers at this point in time.

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

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>



On 10/13/04 10:30 PM, in article
BD935D0E.568E%[email protected], "The Terminator"

So which component is broken – Excel or PDFMaker? The error is not
happening in Word or PowerPoint.


On 10/13/04 17:14, in article
BD93130F.3601%[email protected], "Beth Rosengard"

Hi Hugh,

It has to do with the PDFMaker add-in. For a workaround, see
the previous
posts on this same thread.

Okay the post must be whizing off in to the sunset.

Here is the permantent cure to remove PDFMaker.

Quit Office/word/excel/powerpoint.

from finder choose find file and type in PDFMaker

There should be three files. one for Word. one for excel, one for powerpoint

create 3 empty Folders. copy the name of each file and paste on each of
the three folder The one for example is PDFMaker.xla.

now go to each folder containing folder containing appropriate File

for example go to folder containing file named PDFMaker.xla.

Now move that file to trash. now sub the folder named PDFMaker.xla.

reat for the word setup and the powerpoint setup subing the appropriate
named folder.

Now. empty Trash

Now open word, Excel or Powerpoint

PDFMaker should no longer show up and there may be a marked difference
in opening time for them. (YMMV)

You should no longer get this erro message. You should no longer have
any strange load problems from now on.

Adobe has taken upon itself to emaulate a Practice Microsoft does on its
products that some times get it in trouble - "Self-Healing".

If Acrobat discovers these files missing it takes upon itself to
reinstall them. IN Office if it doscovers missing files it takes upon
itself to locate and reinstall them. (Two attempts from competting
applications (Competeing in that they try to fix things) spells trouble.)

Thie trick takes into acount and old trick that has been in eefect on
the Mac OS since day one and also in UNIX.

You CAN'T overwrite a file with s folder; and the opposite is also true
you CAN'T overwrite a folder with a file.


Write this down save it committ this tos PDF, save it on a
floppy,CD/DVD/ZIP Disk Jazz Drive/Super Disk. what ever method you have
for saving tips. and keep it as long as you use acrobat and Office.

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |MEMBER:VPEA (LIFE) ETA-I, NESDA,ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112-1809 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto:p[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://home.kimbanet.com/~pjones/birthday/index.htm>
<http://vpea.exis.net>
 
B

Beth Rosengard

Hi Phillip,

I had already outlined the workaround on this thread; you didn't need to do
it again. When I said "no answers at this point," I was referring to the
question about exactly who needs to do a fix ­ Adobe or MS. I see from one
of your previous posts that you believe it to be Adobe. That would have
been my assumption as well but in the absence of evidence, I declined to
guess. You might want to read a little more carefully before responding
next time.

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

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>
 
P

Phillip M. Jones, CE.T.

Beth said:
Hi Phillip,

I had already outlined the workaround on this thread; you didn't need to do
it again. When I said "no answers at this point," I was referring to the
question about exactly who needs to do a fix ­ Adobe or MS. I see from one
of your previous posts that you believe it to be Adobe. That would have
been my assumption as well but in the absence of evidence, I declined to
guess. You might want to read a little more carefully before responding
next time.
Thanks Beth sorry for redundant information. And also for my terible
typing as well. :-(

In Tha Aadobe newsgroups, this new erro message in Office is a hot topic
and they have discovered that the PDFMaker files are responsible. Slow
downs and other strange behaviours are also attributed to PDFMaker in
the newsgroup as well.

Acrobat is the one to originally install this item and will reinstall it
each time you delete it from office as soon as acrobat is openned.

Office once it discovers a file component in its install will attempt to
locate and reinstall as well.

But Adobe is responsible, the design and creation of PDFMaker.

When applications are updated conflicts are sometime going to to occur.

Now as to whether each get of the urge to say "its your fault fix" and
work together to figure out what the problem is - that's another story.

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |MEMBER:VPEA (LIFE) ETA-I, NESDA,ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112-1809 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto:p[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://home.kimbanet.com/~pjones/birthday/index.htm>
<http://vpea.exis.net>
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

Thanks Beth sorry for redundant information. And also for my terible
typing as well. :-(

For God's sake, Phillip, why don't you use a spell-checker? Your spelling,
or typing, is atrocious. My typing is also atrocious, but the Entourage
spell-checker, set to intervene on send, ensures that 95% of it gets fixed.
Look at your next sentence - it's unreadable.
 
B

Burt Johnson

Phillip M. Jones said:
On Acrobat newsgroup this is found to be caused by the PDFMaker.xla
file. (the file that creates that &*$# PDFMaker Thingi on word,excel,
and powerpoint menus.

create a folder named PDFMaker.xla and replace the file of the same name
with this folder. The Dratted PDFMaker will be gone forever and a day
(Unles you remove and resinstall Office).

Repeat for equivelent files in Word and Powerpoint as well.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

I came here to find out about this irritating error on quitting Excel,
but that PDFMaker in Word has bugged me for ages too. It insists on
floating below the other toolbars, and won't remember that I want it to
the right on the same level. I therefore always have new documents open
smaller and lower than I want.

I am now FREE of that stupid tool that I never used and always got in
the way! :)
 
J

John McGhie

Everyone:

Just a note of caution... While Adobe's PDFMaker is a notorious source of
irritation, it's not the only thing that "could" produce that error.

Visual Basic for Applications compiles at run-time, so you can conceivably
get this error when you first attempt to RUN any macro that has been coded
for PC Word, particularly the later versions.

If the offending module is not encrypted, Word will start a debugger which
will attempt to show you where the error is. However, if the vendor has
locked their code (as Adobe does) Word can't display the code so you get the
infuriating "Compile Error in Hidden Module". In Adobe's case, their coding
problem is in a module named "AutoExec".

AutoExec is a reserved macro name that causes Word to run the macro so named
every time it starts up, which is why we tend to find out about Adobe's
little problems immediately.

I would argue (some would say "rant"...) about PDFMaker's basic design. The
thing runs EVERY time Word starts up. It doesn't need to: once would be
sufficient. Because it runs every time, it changes your toolbars every
time, which eventually breaks your Normal template. Not a good design...

Because Adobe relies on an "Auto" macro, and you can have only one of those
operating at a time, they manage to interfere with the user's Auto macros,
which leads to a lot of time-consuming bug-hunting until you finally realise
that the reason YOUR macro doesn't run is that Adobe has one with the same
name in a hidden module you can't see. Not a kind thing to do to users...

And finally, there is no excuse for a company of Adobe's size publishing VBA
that generates compile errors. VBA supports conditional compilation, and
it's a trivial matter to code a macro so that it compiles and runs correctly
on any Microsoft Word platform. I know this because I have to do it: parts
of my macros require different code between Word 2000 and Word 2003.

</Rant>



THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

I came here to find out about this irritating error on quitting Excel,
but that PDFMaker in Word has bugged me for ages too. It insists on
floating below the other toolbars, and won't remember that I want it to
the right on the same level. I therefore always have new documents open
smaller and lower than I want.

I am now FREE of that stupid tool that I never used and always got in
the way! :)

--

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

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410
 
G

Gary Menszyk

Phillip,

If all PDFMaker did was give you a button to create PDFs then you are
correct that it is redundant. However, that is not just what it does. If you
have links in documents, it converts the links to appropriate web links or
links to other PDF documents among other functions.

So just removing it is not an answer for a lot of people.

Gary...
 
S

Sam Elowitch

I am correct that SP1 does not update Handheld Sync, and that the version of
HS one should use with Office for Mac 2004 SP1 is the same as the one used
for Office for Mac 2004?

-Sam
 
D

Daiya Mitchell

If all PDFMaker did was give you a button to create PDFs then you are
correct that it is redundant. However, that is not just what it does. If you
have links in documents, it converts the links to appropriate web links or
links to other PDF documents among other functions.

So just removing it is not an answer for a lot of people.

Yeah, I was wondering about that, although I've understood MacAcrobat has
less functionality than WinAcrobat. But apparently the Excel "compile
error" message is just a nuisance, not an actual problem, right? It also
seems that removing simply the Excel PDFMaker template fixes the problem,
which will still let you have the functions in the other apps, depending on
how many links are in your excel files.

Or, depending on how often you convert to PDF, create an applescript which
quits, switches the files around, and restarts while you take a stretch
break, so that the macros are only installed when you actually need them.

Depending on what functions you use, it is apparently also possible to open
the OS X PDF file up in Acrobat and use it to optimize the size, etc.

With luck, such workarounds would only be needed temporarily.
 
P

Phillip M. Jones, CE.T.

I'll try to use the spell checker :)

URL's will automatically become hot links in a word document.

But it does not transfer to Acrobat. while the text become blue and
underlined. It is not active.

I never could get PDFMaker to work be it in OS9 or OSX. So I can not
dispute your claim. I just know it was subject to easy corruption, and
caused many problems.

You can click on the Link Tool in Acrobat and create a URL Link.

Its not easy though to create a Mailto: Link in Acrobat.

Gary said:
Phillip,

If all PDFMaker did was give you a button to create PDFs then you are
correct that it is redundant. However, that is not just what it does. If you
have links in documents, it converts the links to appropriate web links or
links to other PDF documents among other functions.

So just removing it is not an answer for a lot of people.

Gary...


--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |MEMBER:VPEA (LIFE) ETA-I, NESDA,ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112-1809 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto:p[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://home.kimbanet.com/~pjones/birthday/index.htm>
<http://vpea.exis.net>
 
P

Pierre Igot

Paul,

As usual, we have MVPs making excuses for Microsoft whenever the
company fails to meet expectations.

Office 2004 was released in May 2004. An update posted in October 2004
doesn't qualify as an "early service release" to me -- although in
Microsoft's twisted sense of time, where it takes decades for bugs to
get fixed, it probably qualifies as "early".

The fact that this release doesn't fix an issue as obvious as the one
with Postscript fonts and the non-breaking space:

http://www.latext.com/pm/betalogue/P1246

is unacceptable. The fact that it doesn't fix the crash triggered by
utilities such as Spell Catcher or TypeIt4Me:

http://www.latext.com/pm/comments/1298_0_1_0_C/

is just bad.

But as usual, Microsoft applies its own twisted logic to user feedback
and comes up with a bloated updater that fixes very little.

And if it did fix stuff that it doesn't tell us about, then it has a
thing or two to learn about company feedback as well. Threat of
litigation my eye. The US department of justice itself wasn't able to
bring MS to justice. It's not likely that any group of users big or
small ever will.

Pierre
 
J

John McGhie

And as usual, we have Pierre vigorously impersonating a "rebel without a
clue" :)

Yes, SP1 *is* an "early" service release: the real one can usually be
expected around 12 months after the product ships.

I could explain why, but Pierre has seen the explanation a dozen times
before, and everyone else has a life to live.

The abridged version is "To do a service release you have to compile and
re-test the whole damn application suite. Rather than wait for that process
to complete, Microsoft on this occasion shipped as much as they had got
tested at this stage. The rest will come when it has been fully regression
tested."

But I don't recommend that anyone hold their breath waiting for Microsoft to
fix crashes caused by software neither Microsoft nor Apple manufactured.

Sorry everyone: I couldn't resist :)


Paul,

As usual, we have MVPs making excuses for Microsoft whenever the
company fails to meet expectations.

Office 2004 was released in May 2004. An update posted in October 2004
doesn't qualify as an "early service release" to me -- although in
Microsoft's twisted sense of time, where it takes decades for bugs to
get fixed, it probably qualifies as "early".

The fact that this release doesn't fix an issue as obvious as the one
with Postscript fonts and the non-breaking space:

http://www.latext.com/pm/betalogue/P1246

is unacceptable. The fact that it doesn't fix the crash triggered by
utilities such as Spell Catcher or TypeIt4Me:

http://www.latext.com/pm/comments/1298_0_1_0_C/

is just bad.

But as usual, Microsoft applies its own twisted logic to user feedback
and comes up with a bloated updater that fixes very little.

And if it did fix stuff that it doesn't tell us about, then it has a
thing or two to learn about company feedback as well. Threat of
litigation my eye. The US department of justice itself wasn't able to
bring MS to justice. It's not likely that any group of users big or
small ever will.

Pierre
--
Pierre Igot
LATEXT - Literature & Visuals @ www.latext.com
BETALOGUE - Weblog at www.latext.com/pm/betalogue
"Apple Peel" Columnist @ Applelust.com

--

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

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Top