Word 2004 gets stuck when I try to display the drawing toolbar

[Andreas Kalt]

I use a relativley fresh install of Office 2004/mac on a new iBook. In
my account (not in my wife's) Word becomes unresponsive when I try to
display the drawig toolbar. I was previously able to use it and had
resized and repositioned it. I can't recall when the problem started or
what happened before that.

Is there a way to repair a Word installation? I'm a new Mac user and
remember that on WIndows such a repair installation exists.

Thanks for any suggestions,
Andreas

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Andreas,

It sounds like it might be a corrupt Normal template. Follow the
instructions at the following link to test Normal:
<http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/MacWordNormal.htm>

(If you're using Safari, you may have to hit Reload once or twice.)


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***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[Andreas Kalt]

It sounds like it might be a corrupt Normal template. Follow the
instructions at the following link to test Normal:
<http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/MacWordNormal.htm>

I did that but Word does not seem to create a new normal file although I
get the default toolbars etc. If I do a search for "normal" I only get
my renamed one ("oldnormal") and nothing else.

Although Word starts with default toolbars it still stalls when I try to
display the drawing toolbar.

Any more ideas?
Thanks.

 

[Andreas Kalt]

I did that but Word does not seem to create a new normal file although I
get the default toolbars etc. If I do a search for "normal" I only get
my renamed one ("oldnormal") and nothing else.

Ok, correction: Word *does* create a new normal but only after I quit it
so that's why I didn't find it at first.

The main problem remains, though: becomes unresponsive when trying to
display the drawing toolbar.

 

[Andreas Kalt]

I use a relativley fresh install of Office 2004/mac on a new iBook. In
my account (not in my wife's) Word becomes unresponsive when I try to
display the drawig toolbar. I was previously able to use it and had
resized and repositioned it. I can't recall when the problem started or
what happened before that.

Is there a way to repair a Word installation? I'm a new Mac user and
remember that on WIndows such a repair installation exists.

I contacted MS support. The solution was to delete my Word Preference
file (com.microsoft.Word.plist in username > Library > Preferences).
This deleted all my customizations but got toolbar back again. It seems,
that this file became corrupted during an extensive "customisation
session".

 

[Jeffrey Weston [MSFT]]

Hey Andreas, thanks for posting your resolution to the Newsgroup.

I was just wondering if you could give me any information on what
customizing you where doing that may have caused the corruption.

Where you just customizing the Drawing Toolbar?
Or other toolbars? (If so which ones)
Where you also customizing the Drop Down Menu etc...?
Where you creating you¹re own toolbars?

If you can, any information would be great. You can email me directly at:
(e-mail address removed)

Thanks for posting to the Newsgroup

Jeffrey Weston
Mac Word Test
Macintosh Business Unit
Microsoft

 

[Andreas Kalt]

I contacted MS support. The solution was to delete my Word Preference
file (com.microsoft.Word.plist in username > Library > Preferences).
This deleted all my customizations but got toolbar back again. It seems,
that this file became corrupted during an extensive "customisation
session".

Bad news. The problem occured again after I tried to customize my
toolbars again. Did anyone have similar problems and perhaps found a
solution?

 

[John McGhie]

Yes, such problems will occur if you extensively customise the built-in
toolbars.

There are several things I do to minimise the possibilities of this
happening:

1) Save after every change. Hold down the SHIFT key, which reveals the
Save All item on the File menu, then Save All to force a save of the
template after each change.

2) Have only one document open when customising templates. Each document
holds an image of the template open in memory. If you have more than one
document open, when you quit, you can sometimes get a mixture of the
customised and non-customised versions of the same template.

3) (And this is the most important) Create a new toolbar to customise, do
not customise the built-in ones. This has two benefits: your customisations
cannot then cause conflicts in the standard toolbars that cause template
corruption; and if the template DOES corrupt, you can rename it, create a
new template, then use Organiser to copy your customised toolbar back into
the new template. You cannot copy the built-in toolbars to prevent template
corruption.

4) Be careful to use the correct size and colour standard for toolbar
icons. They must be in RGB colour at 16 colours: any higher and you will
get problems. Word 2004 will handle 256 colours.

5) Don't "drag and drop" between toolbars. Use a Drag/Copy, not a Drag/Cut
to transfer icons. In other words, if you drag without holding down the
control key, you are deleting from one toolbar and pasting in the second.
When you save, Word can get confused as to which template and toolbar the
icon is actually stored in. This is what usually causes the problems.

If you organise things so you have only one document and one template open
and you copy rather than move, you will have a lot less problems.

Hope this helps

Bad news. The problem occured again after I tried to customize my
toolbars again. Did anyone have similar problems and perhaps found a
solution?

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Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410