user directory dimmed in browse. Office 2004. 11.3.4

[revduke123]

Hi everyone,

when I try to save/open files in Microsoft Word, the usual file-
browser window comes up, except that in the sidebar, my user directory
icon is dimmed, preventing me from accessing it with the mouse.

Curiously, I can navigate inside the directory using the keyboard.
Also, the problem does not occur with excel, or Finder, or any other
app that I tried. It seems unique to Word.

I tried restarting Word. No joy.

Any ideas?

I've upgraded recently to 11.3.4, using iMac OS X 10.4.9

thanks,

tim

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Tim -

This could just be a permissions thing. I'd try running Disk Utility -
Repair Disk Permissions & report back with your results.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[revduke123]

Tried fixing disk permissions with Mac OS "Disk Utility", it
discovered no probs.
Tried rebooting, no joy.
Tried trashing preferences (both user and home), no joy.
To my mind the bizarre thing is that Excel and powerpoint don't have
the same problem. What would be unique about Word?
tim

 

[revduke123]

Well, I reinstalled the combo update and completely reinstalled Office
plus its updates and everything is working fine. Other usergroups
seem to have noticed odd behaviour similar to mine; I noticed that in
addition to dimming the user directory icon, Word was also unable to
recognise word documents, and would convert them to a rich text
format. So the dimming was only part of the problem.

Anyway, problem fixed. I didn't have any utilities or "haxies". The
only things I can think of by way of explanation are:
1) maybe the combo update achieves more than the delta update, even
though the OS was up-to-date
2) I had updated in an unusual sequence; first Office, then (because I
encountered some probs), Tiger. But this time I was sure to do Tiger
then Office.

Thanks for your ideas and time!
It was much appreciated.
Tim

 

[CyberTaz]

Glad you got it sorted and thanks for posting back with your results!

I don't mean to be a naysayer, but I'm concerned that you _may_ not be out
of the woods yet. Based on the additional information there could be a
deeper file system error which is what caused the lost file association. If
so, the fix may only be temporary.

Just to be safe you might run Disk Utility - Verify Disk to see if it comes
up with anything. If it reports any errors start up from your OS X install
disk (or other bootable drive) & run DU's Repair Disk [from the Utilities
menu] - repeatedly (if necessary) until no errors are found... Hopefully
there won't be any, but it's worth a few minutes to find out

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac