Update Progress Bar: What about crashes?!

[George Sand]

Today Microsoft issued an AutoUpdate for Office Mac 2004:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/autoupdate/description/0409MSau010001.htm

I am wondering why developers are working on an update to fix the
progress bar of the AutoUpdate, instead of working on reducing the
number of crashes per day on their software.

I use Word and Excel heavily every day, and at LEAST once a day I
experience a crash. I've been submitting reports to Microsoft daily,
too.

Does anybody else have a similarly bad experience? I'm running OS X
10.3.5 on a new Powerbook with 1 GB RAM and 8 GB free HDD...

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

Some people do have a similarly bad experience, but I think the majority of
people don't. You should run through the troubleshooting techniques that
you will find here:

For Word:
http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/TroubleshootingIndex.htm
(hit refresh a few times in Safari, or use a different browser)

For Excel:
http://www.mcgimpsey.com/macoffice/index.html
(I think that's the right link, look for a link for Excel troubleshooting
and/or Office troubleshooting).

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I am wondering why developers are working on an update to fix the
progress bar of the AutoUpdate, instead of working on reducing the
number of crashes per day on their software.

You're expressing a false premise. Working on one doesn't preclude
working on the others. It would be natural that a single fix to a
standalone app would be easier to fix than problems with complex,
integrated applications. The testing alone involved with *any* change to
Word and Excel would dwarf that of AutoUpdate.

I use Word and Excel heavily every day, and at LEAST once a day I
experience a crash. I've been submitting reports to Microsoft daily,
too.

Does anybody else have a similarly bad experience? I'm running OS X
10.3.5 on a new Powerbook with 1 GB RAM and 8 GB free HDD...

I crash Excel at least once every couple of days, but then I stress it
pretty heavily, including programming the VBE and very heavily modifying
the user interface.

Word almost never crashes (maybe once every other week under heavy
load). I customize nearly everything about the UI, but I never save
anything in the Normal template - preferring global add-ins and document
specific templates instead.

For both apps, it seems that crashes occur more frequently the longer
they've been running.

Use the sites that Dayo gave you. You shouldn't be having nearly as many
problems as you're having.