word 2004 + os x 10.3 + network home directories = constant crashes! please help

[jackson.harvell]

hello...

my clients who are running office 2004 in an all-mac open directory
environment. an xserve hosts the users home directories, they log in to
machines on their desks and use the home directories located on the
xserve g5. licsened copies of office 2004 are installed in the
/Applications folder on each clients root hard drive. all machines have
up-to-date software (ie. os 10.3.6 & service pack 1 for office 2004)

microsoft word crashes consistently after a few minutes use.

excel seems stable; they dont use powerpoint or entourage enough for
me to say whether or not these work.

i have found little/no documentation on using office 2004 in a
networked home directory environment. does anyone know what the deal is
with this? is it supported? does it work? any suggestions or remedies
to make word work will be greatly appreciated.



jackson harvell

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Jackson:

Networked user home folders is indeed supported. It just doesn't work very
well!!

Our resident Unix guru Corentin found the answer:

The bug (and the workaround) are known )



You can copy this CRD to the pref folder for the other user (the one
which has the use folder located on another partition) and the problem
should disappear for him/her.

The problem is that when the user fodler is not located on the boot
volume, the Office apps fail to generate a proper CRD the first time
they are launched.
The CRD contains the information about the location of all external
components the Office apps need (eg the VBA runtimes).
If the CRD is corrupted, the applications crash on trying to use any of
the external components (including VBA).

Copying a properly generated CRD from another account fools Office and
it doesn't try to re-create it (and corrupt it).

Thanks Corentin, hope this works for you Jackson.

hello...

my clients who are running office 2004 in an all-mac open directory
environment. an xserve hosts the users home directories, they log in to
machines on their desks and use the home directories located on the
xserve g5. licsened copies of office 2004 are installed in the
/Applications folder on each clients root hard drive. all machines have
up-to-date software (ie. os 10.3.6 & service pack 1 for office 2004)

microsoft word crashes consistently after a few minutes use.

excel seems stable; they dont use powerpoint or entourage enough for
me to say whether or not these work.

i have found little/no documentation on using office 2004 in a
networked home directory environment. does anyone know what the deal is
with this? is it supported? does it work? any suggestions or remedies
to make word work will be greatly appreciated.



jackson harvell

--

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

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Hi Jackson:

Networked user home folders is indeed supported. It just doesn't work very
well!!

Our resident Unix guru Corentin found the answer:

That was a collaborative effort... and it was for Office X.......
Office 2004 got rid of the CRD and everything is now in .plist that
shoudl support relative addressing for entworked or re-located home
directories. My home directory is relocated (but nor networked) and it
works like a charm.
Additionally, the CRD equally affected Word, Excel and PPT (but not
Entourage).
It looks to me like there is something else here... I hope it's not
related to some of the known networking issues wuth the System.
10.3.7 has been rumored on many sites, I wonder whether it will bring
any improvements on this area.

Is there any plug-in installed for Office on these machines ???



Corentin

 

[jackson.harvell]

hello corentin and thanks for your replies.

there are no plug-ins installed, it is just a standard installation.

there is very little information related to network home directories, i
did find this thread:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group..._doneTitle=Back+to+Search&&d#c73205233a8b8ea3


but it doesnt offer much help.


at macOSXhints there is another article:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20031222020759902

an excerpt from the macosxhints story:
_______________________________________________________________

You have no doubt noticed all the different posts regarding the issue
of working around the bugs in M$ Office to get it to run properly
(including VBScript) when users have Network Home Directories. Under
Panther none of the already suggested workarounds fixed the problem
permanently (although we were able to launch it once or twice and some
even kept working until the next log-in).

To get Word to run happily on our Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) Clients with
Network Home Directories hosted on 10.3 (Panther) Server I had to
modify the instructions in another hint. While I was at it I made it a
script and got the script to fix the files for every user.

Here's my shell script (that runs on the server where the Home
Directories are hosted):
#!/bin/tcsh -f
# This script modifies items in the ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft
# folder of each (network) user to overcome a bug in Word

# change this to your Network Share Point
cd /Users

# Creates a list of all folders in the directory we just switched to
foreach userDir ( * )
if ( ( $userDir != "admin" ) && ( $userDir != "Shared" ) ) then
# Delete the if section (or part of it) if you have no local users
# and no "Shared" directory in your Network Share Point
rm $userDir/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office\ Registration\
Cache\ X
touch $userDir/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office\ Registration\
Cache\ X
chown -f root $userDir/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office\
Registration\ Cache\ X
chown -f $userDir /Users/$userDir/Library/Preferences/Microsoft
chmod -f 755 $userDir/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office\
Registration\ Cache\ X
chmod -f 755 $userDir/Library/Preferences/Microsoft
endif
end

exit 0

Copy this script to TextEdit, save it somewhere that makes sense to you
(I called mine "wordfix.sh" and saved it in /Library) and make it
executable:
chmod +x /path/to/script.sh
Execute the script once as root (sudo /path/to/script.sh), but if the
problem returns (e.g. after users log out or restart), then you might
need to have the script execute regularly (I have it execute every five
minutes) using cron. Just add the following line to your system crontab
using your preferred editor (pico works well for me ... sudo pico
/etc/crontab):
* * * * * root /path/to/script.sh > /dev/null
If you are still having problems ensure that the "Default permissions
for new files and folders" as set in Workgroup Manager (Sharing: Share
Point: Protocols) is "Use standard UNIX behaviour" and not "Inherit
permissions from parent" as I think this may have been a problem for me
(however this is unverified so don't take it as gospel).
_______________________________________________________________
does this suggest anything?

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

hello corentin and thanks for your replies.

there are no plug-ins installed, it is just a standard installation.

there is very little information related to network home directories, i
did find this thread:

[...]


THe thread clearly mentions that this is supported in 2004 and that syou
shouldn't have anything to do beside have the home folder properly
specified in the NetInfo Database (which you probably did).

but it doesnt offer much help.


at macOSXhints there is another article:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20031222020759902

That's for Office X only... It doesn't apply for 2004. Additionally, for
Office X there are easier solutions than this one.

does this suggest anything?

Nope. I don't understand why it doesn't work for you
Are you sure everything is OK in the NetInfo database ??

Corentin