Panther and Office v. X (Word and Entourage) Problems

[Christine Thompson]

I'm running an iMac G4 with 384 MB of memory. Last week, the office
upgraded to Panther. I'm current to the 10.3.4 version. We also have
Office v. X with the update 10.1.5. Since yesterday (prior to
updating to Office 10.1.5) I've been having problems with Word and
Entourage. Word (intermittently) will not let me "save as." That is,
I cannot save a document with a new name without Word crashing. I've
run the repair/verify disc utility with no success. So, I updated the
Office v. X with 10.1.5 and ran the disc utility again.

I still cannot "save as" and, just now, I attempted to send a draft of
a document to someone using the "send to ... mail recipient as
attachment"; however, the "mail recipient as attachment" was greyed
out and unavailable. This is a function we use constantly in our
office, so it is very frustrating. I was, however, able to create an
email in Entourage, then "add" the word file as an attachment. I see
from the various postings that there are some problems out there --
so, are there any fixes?

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi Christine,

The first thing I would try is to use Disk Utility's First Aid feature
to repair permssions.

Please try that and post back whether or not that helped.

Thanks.

-Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

 

[Christine Thompson]

Hi Christine,

The first thing I would try is to use Disk Utility's First Aid feature
to repair permssions.

Please try that and post back whether or not that helped.

Thanks.

-Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

Yes. I ran the Disc Utility twice.

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi again,

The next thing I would try is to delete preferences. If you delete
preferences you will lose customizations. If you have spent a lot of
time customizing you can rename, rather than delete.

With all office applications closed head to the preferences folder and
delete all of the plist files that are Microsoft office related. Then
trash the Microsoft folder in preferences. Empty the trash.

When you open an office application it will go through a
reinitialization. It's possible that you may be prompted for your
product ID code, so have it handy just in case.

There is a file called "normal" that stores more word's preferences.
With word closed, try renaming that file and then open word.

Have you installed anything new lately besides doing the OS update?

-Jim

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

It sounds like all your problems may be stemming from Word....there's a lot
of troubleshooting suggestions at this link, including details on carrying
out Jim's two suggestions, to test the prefs file (for Word or for all
Office apps) and the Normal template.

http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/TroubleshootingIndex.htm
(hit refresh in safari a few times or use a browser)

DM

 

[Christine Thompson]

It sounds like all your problems may be stemming from Word....there's a lot
of troubleshooting suggestions at this link, including details on carrying
out Jim's two suggestions, to test the prefs file (for Word or for all
Office apps) and the Normal template.

http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/TroubleshootingIndex.htm
(hit refresh in safari a few times or use a browser)

DM

Thanks Jim and Dayo for responding to my posts. I tried everything
suggested to no avail. I ended up uninstalling Office v. X and
reinstalling. (What a pain in the ...) That worked. One thing I
noticed was that the font we use, Arial, looks different on my
monitor. Odd. It prints out fine though. I will be installing the
updates today or tomorrow -- although the prospect has me a little
concerned. I may hold off on 10.1.5 until some big office crunches
are out of the way. If I have problems again, I'll post back. Which
leads me to wonder if Microsoft puts a limit on the number of times
Office v. X can be reinstalled on the same computer ...

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi Christine,

There is no limit to the number of times any Mac version of office can
be installed and uninstalled on any computer.

-Jim

--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP
MVP FAQ
<http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;mvpfaqs>

 

[Ken Sherwood]

I have read all of the suggestions on this post and followed all of
the procedures suggested in the trouble-shooting list but cannot solve
the same problem on my powerbook G4. This problem started in Office
v.X. I uninstalled Office x and installed office 2004 and still have
the problem. I have noticed specifically that word only freezes when i
already have entourage running. If I wait anywhere from 10-20 minutes,
word will unfreeze and work fine until i try to shut it down in which
case it doesn't completely shut down. I am open to any further
suggestions.

Ken Sherwood

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Ken,

When you say you tried all the suggestions in this thread, does that include
a complete uninstall and reinstall? If not, that's what I'd recommend and
you should follow the procedure outlined here:
<http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/RemoveReinstall.htm>

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

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