Skittish Toolbars

[Spenard/Bosworth]

I've had a good time today communing with fellow mac users who bend MS apps
to their will. I've been doing this on Win and Mac platforms for years, and
am quite surprised at how few of us there are.

Recently, I upgraded to OffX and find that customization is remarkably
different than I have experienced in earlier versions of office on either
platform. I'm pretty good with change but not so sure yet what was gained
here.

I have an observation to make on the subject of creating one's own normal
template and customized toolbars.

Prior to reading your advice on this subject, I found that customizing
default toolbars was impossible - for one thing, word quit constantly. I had
to close the customize window after every 3 or 4 operations and "save all"
just to preserve my work.

Secondly, the default toolbars were really skittish - they never preserved
the placement of the icons I had established. Upon close of customize
dialog, the toolbar reconfigured itself - incredibly annoying.

Now I have completely reset normal.dot to default and work in my own normal
template. The new toolbars I create retain the shape I intended, and widows
quits unexpectedly much less often.

Thanks for the advice. I have a few other questions that I will post under
appropos subject headers making sure to include the word toolbars.

To build on Clive Huggan's suggestion, and until someone initiates a
..mac.office.customize group (as there is for the windows side), I suggest
that posts that have to do with customization begin with "customize:" in the
subject line.

Thanks,

Andre

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

I doubt that there will be a .customize group for Mac anytime soon. The Mac
community is too small to necessitate it. As for your suggestion to begin
subject lines with "customize", it's a good one except that most people
won't see it. That's just the way it goes with these newsgroups. There are
a few "regulars" but the majority pop in and out whenever they have a
question.

Having discussions re customization on the general program NGs will
hopefully encourage less advanced users to take more control of their
programs.

Dayo

 

[Spenard/Bosworth]

Hi Beth -
By "creating one's own normal template" I meant a custom template which I
would use I place of normal.dot. So, after resetting everything in
normal.dot, I created my custom template.

Due to some other really odd issues that plagued my first installation of
offx, I manually removed everything from an old version of 2001, the offx
folder and the user data folder, and deleted them. I reloaded offx and that
fixed all the previous problems I had. The problem with skittish toolbars I
describe existed previously but is worse in the new installation.

It is good to know that the behavior I described is not the norm. I did try
the troubleshooting you mention before I reinstalled offx in an attempt to
fix the other problems with no luck.
I have not tried any of the troubleshooting procedures on the new install. I
do have some sense of what they are, but perhaps I would benefit from your
offer to list them. You are welcome to refer me to a previous post in the
newsgroup or FAQ.

Too bad about not being able to set up a mac.customize group. Thanks for the
help.

Andre

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Andre,

If you tried a manual removal of Office 2001, there's no way you got it all
which means there's no way you got a clean reinstall. Unfortunately I think
this means that you'll need to uninstall both Office 2001 and Office X and
reinstall them both. The reason for doing both is that whichever version of
Office is installed last is the one that will be defaulted to (and I assume
you'd prefer to default to Office X) when you open any Office application.

The procedures for uninstalling/reinstalling Office 2001 and Office X are
not identical. See below for each.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Office 2001 Removal:

Download the Office 2001 Remover from
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/download/office2001/RemoveOffice.asp>.
DO NOT use the remover from the Office 2001 CD; it is not up-to-date. With
all Office applications closed, run it. That searches your hard disk to
make sure everything is removed. Rebuild the desktop.

[Pardon my ignorance on this last point since I'm still in OS 9.1 myself. I
know you don't rebuild desktops in OS X and I don't know/understand if your
installation of Office 2001 is in OS 9.2.2 or in Classic (or even if this is
relevant), but if it's OS 9.2.2 then you should still be able to rebuild the
desktop, I think .]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Office X Removal:

The Remove Office tool is located in the Value Pack folder on the Office X
CD. Install it and run it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Office 2001 Reinstallation:

Reinstall Office 2001 from the CD and start each Office 2001 application
once to cause it to initialize itself. Download and install the following
updaters from Mactopia.com
(<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/download/default.asp#Office2001>) in this
Order and rebuild the desktop again:

* Microsoft Office 2001 Service Release 1
* Microsoft Word 2001 Security Update: Macro Vulnerability
* Microsoft PowerPoint/Excel 2001 Macro Security Update
* Entourage 2001 - Hotmail Updater (even if you don¹t use Hotmail)
* Microsoft Office 2001 SSL Security Updater

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Office X Reinstallation:

Now reinstall Office X using the installer on the CD or do a Drag & Drop to
the Applications folder. Also don't forget to install any Value Pack items
you need. When you've finished, you'll need to download
(<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/download/>) and install the Office X 10.1.2 &
10.1.4 updaters. Then run Disk Utility First Aid to repair permissions: Go
to Macintosh HD/Applications/Utilities; open up Disk Utility; select your
hard disk and click the First Aid tab and then the button to "Repair Disk
Permissions".

That's it. It's not difficult, just time-consuming, but until you know
you've got clean installations of Office, there's no point in doing further
troubleshooting. Besides, I expect that these procedures will fix your
Normal template problems.

By the way, if you don't want to lose your Custom template, copy it to
external media so you can transfer it later.

Hope this helps.

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/WordMac/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>