OS X 10.3.3 & Office 98 partial launches

[jmh]

I transferred Office 98 folders from my old G4 OS9.2.2
system to a G5 10.3.3.

Most of my OS 9 apps, including very old and recent ones,
load and work properly.

However each app in Office [Word, Excel, PP] load
partially: PP actually gives me the OPen new project
dialogue, Excel and Word only get to the splash screen, and
then they crash.

Alerts have popped up during some of the partial launches
saying that ATM can't do this or that. So presumably this
has something to do with fonts. If so what fonts does MS
Office need, etc.

Can anyone help me with details or suggest a line of trial
and error, or courses other than just buying the latest
versions for OS X.

Thanks.

jmh

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

Well, you'll probably eventually get tired of switching to classic, but
buying a new program (I think) is never the first thing to do to solve
problems (I keep seeing windows people saying they did that--it's insane!
anyhow).

Okay, standard things to check, though I'm on OS 9/Office 2001.

I don't know about Adobe Type Manager, but the bottom of this Office X
troubleshooting page has a link and advice on troubleshooting fonts. But
that can be a long procedure, you probably want to try the prefs first.
http://www.mcgimpsey.com/macoffice/office/troubleshooting.html
The page also has directions to repair permissions, always worth trying.

If you can rebuild the desktop in Classic, do so.

***To check for corrupt Prefs:

Quit all office apps
In the prefs folder, find Word Settings (8), Excel Settings (8), Powerpoint
Settings (8), and the PPC Registration Database, and I think Office Settings
(8).
Drag them to the desktop, apps should recreate them on reopening.
If all is well, trash the old files. Since the Settings file stores all your
preferences, you will need to reset these. (You could test to see if just
one of them was the problem, might avoid some resetting, but probably
quicker to reset prefs)
If the fix did not work, quit apps, delete the new Settings files that were
created and rename the old files back.

You might want to test the ATM prefs too, the same way.

***Can you check for an extensions conflicts in Classic? If so, test that
too. Try MacHelp for instructions.

***Update
From Mactopia.com, if you search there should be a page telling you which
ones you actually need, or someone here can look it up if necessary.

I left out some techniques that mostly apply to Word, and others might come
along with better fixes, but that should get you started.

DM