Open Docs in Office Hangs System

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David_Kudler

I tried asking about this over on the Apple boards, but no answers so far, so I'll try here.

I'm running OSX Server 10.4.11 (none of the other workstations are affected, so my assumption has been that this isn't a problem with the server software itself) on a MacPro 2 x 2.6GHz with 4GB of RAM. It's one of four workstations (not including laptops) in our small office network.

Here's the problem. Whenever I open Word (11.3.8) or Excel (11.3.7) and try to open a document (whether by selecting Open from the File menu, clicking on the button in the toolbar, or simply starting the application up from scratch), instead of the lovely Open dialog popping up, I get the Spinning Ball of Doom. Then the entire system hangs—I can click on other visible applications and the menu bar changes, but those apps are hung too; I can't access any of the menus, the Dock is inaccessible, and attempting to force quit from the keyboard does nothing. And, of course, because this is the server for our small office network, the entire network comes crashing down.

I've reinstalled Office. I trashed the preference and cache files (though the problem pops up no matter what user or group I'm logged in on—and it doesn't affect any of the workstations other than the server, so I don't think it's a preferences problem; still, better safe than sorry). I ran Disk Utility and fixed permissions. No go. Help!

Again, I am fairly sure that this has something to do with Office's proprietary Open dialog box (ETA: or perhaps not—see below), because I can fire up Word and—if I've done so by double-clicking on a document in the Finder rather then on the application icon—edit and even save. I can open documents in non-MS applications just fine. (And, as I said, I can open and save Office documents on the other computers on the network.) But open a doc in Word or Excel (or, presumably, PowerPoint), and boom—everything comes crashing down.

ETA: I am able to open the Office Project Launcher application with no problems. So I'm really stumped.

Anyone have any ideas???
 
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David_Kudler

So... I just had the system hang when I tried to open a document using the "Open" command in BBEdit Demo 6.1 for OS X.

Not MS Office after all, then.

It must be the way that apps written pre-Tiger access the open dialog.

Eesh.

Not a problem for this board, really, but if anyone has any ideas (aside from reinstalling the system), I'd love to hear it.
 
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Matt Centurión [MSFT]

There are several utilities that add functionality to the Open/Save dialogs
that might be interfering and causing issues. Also Virus checkers could try
to intercept file operations during these dialogs. Try disabling any of
these utilities and virus checkers to see if that relieves your problems.

Matt
MacOffice Testing
Microsoft

Date: 2/1/08 2:18 PM / From: "(e-mail address removed)"
 
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David_Kudler

Thanks so much, Matt!

Alas, to the best of my knowledge we haven't added any funky utilities that I'm aware of; I'll have to check when I'm back in the office. And I know we aren't running any virus-check utilities—though we probably should start thinking about it again at this point.

Ah, well! Perhaps someone has added something without my knowing! I'll have to check the processes and see if there's anything odd running.

Again, thanks for your help!
 

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