Word 2004 crashes on launch

[David Morganstein]

My daughter¹s old iMac can no longer launch Word 2004. It crashes on
launch. This apparently started after she upgraded to OS X 10.3.9. She has
re-installed the update a 2nd time (as suggested on several web sites to
solve other crash problems).

We tried repairing permission, clearing all system caches, running Disk
Warrior.

She also temporarily removed all fonts in her user Fonts folder.

She has also deleted the com.microsoft.Word.prefs.plist file.

Word works fine from another User on her machine so we know the problem is
within her User folder somewhere.

Sure can use some help!

David

 

[matt neuburg]

Word works fine from another User on her machine so we know the problem is
within her User folder somewhere.

My advice in this situation is always to migrate into that user (or
create another user and migrate into that one) and delete the old user.
That solves the problem and is much faster than trying to track down the
details of what's wrong with the old user! In other words, you have
already solved the problem. m.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Word works fine from another User on her machine so we know the problem is

My advice in this situation is always to migrate into that user (or
create another user and migrate into that one) and delete the old user.
That solves the problem and is much faster than trying to track down the
details of what's wrong with the old user! In other words, you have
already solved the problem. m.

If you want the slow route, there's a bunch of stuff listed at the link
below. But the last person who chose that route seemed to regret it (and
possibly seemed a little peeved at me for suggesting it, though he was the
one who chose to reject matt's advice... .

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

Testing the Normal Template is fairly quick to do and a corrupt Normal
template would be a logical explanation of the symptoms you report (you'll
see the heading).

 

[David Morganstein]

By deleting

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/com.microsoft.Word.prefs.plist
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/com.microsoft.Office.prefs.plist

she solved the crash on launch problem! Previously she had deleted

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office Font Cache (11)

but that apparently was not the problem.

Many thanks for the quick help provided! Much appreciated...(a lot easier
than migrating all her user stuff to another and reinstalling various
add-ons.

David