Hi Ryan:
OK, that's diagnostic... Holding down the SHIFT key does many things,
including disabling the files I suggested that you remove.
You are right, unless you have specifically tweaked Spotlight to index this
locations, it won't find these files.
The paths I gave you are specific locations: unless you have moved the
files, that's where they will be.
I am afraid that both Microsoft and Apple tech support staff are rather fond
of blaming the company they do not work for
They are only 'human'.
Phone support staff are paid according to how many calls they get through in
a day, and they get into trouble if they spend too long on the phone with
customers. So they will do whatever they can to get you to go somewhere
else
However, in our experience, slow startup with this product is EITHER an
under-specified PowerPC computer, OR it is a corruption in one or more of
the generated files on your computer (which are not replaced in an update).
It's usually the Normal.dotm Template.
You should expect a 15-to-30 seconds startup on the first start after login.
3 to 5 seconds for subsequent starts.
There is a corruption there somewhere, and I think it's in your Normal.dotm.
Unless you have moved it, your Normal.dotm should be here:
/Users/~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates/
You must remove that file. You must also remove any instances of the Office
X or 2004 template if they were ever on your computer, otherwise Word will
import bad settings from them when it restarts.
Then you must remove:
/Users/~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Word.plist
Users/~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2008 (the whole folder!)
Now, use Disk Utility to repair permissions (to ensure that applications can
write files where they need to). After that, it is critically important to
reboot BEFORE you start any Office applications. This causes OS X to
rebuild certain files before Office 2008 can get out-dated data from them.
After that, Word should create a new Normal.dotm that does not have any
unresolved references, and startup should improve significantly.
If this doesn't work for you, please come back: there are several other
things we can try. But part of the issue is that we need to try a few
things before we can say exactly what the problem is.
Hope this helps
Well, after about an hour on the phone with Microsoft Office tech support,
they decided that it was a Leopard problem and that either they or Apple will
be coming out with a fix soon. We tried many things (All the ones described
here and then-some) and the only thing that worked was starting up the
computer with the SHIFT key held down, disabling ALL the EXTENSIONS... WORD
launched quick and was useable within seconds instead of 3.5 minutes! But we
all know that we need extensions.
I will call Apple tomorrow to see if they have a workaround for this...
--
Don't wait for your answer, click here:
http://www.word.mvps.org/
Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:
[email protected]
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia
