Word 2004 SP2

[Steve Repp]

OK...here is an interesting one!

Word 2004 SP2 seems to have a new "feature" that automatically corrupts
files.

Symptoms are:

User is typing away in word and suddenly the spinning beach ball shows up.
User can no longer to get word to respond. Only cycling power or invoking
"Force Quit" will stop Word at that point. When user comes back to file, it
is corrupted. If a user moves the file to a PC and opens it and saves as to
an RTF, then it will reopen in Word 2004.

Solutions I have read:

Turn off Error Reporting.

Is there any official word on this?

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

It sounds like you have seen other information on this issue--can you link
to it for greater knowledge here?

This is not something I personally have run into.

However, from your description, it sounds like two separate issues:

1) random appearance of beachball
2) force quitting or cycling power (e.g., turning off computer, right?)
causes corruption in the active document

Re #1--what's the OS and RAM in the computer? Any thoughts on possible
triggers for the beachball? What were you doing at the time?

Re #2--what signs tell you the document is corrupted when you come back to
it?

If turning off Error Reporting (MERP) is the solution, what does it fix? #1
or #2? Does the beachball no longer show up, or is it then possible to
Force Quit without corrupting the active doc?

 

[Steve Repp]

Found the particulars. Seems to be an issue when a user has a large amount
of data on their clip board. If I copy a large block of copy to the clip
board...and attempt to close the doc, it dies.

Environment:
Tiger OS 1.4.3, 1.5Gb RAM
Word 2004 SP2+Patch

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Steve-

What are you classifying as "a large amount of data" & what type of data?

I just copied an entire 17 page doc including several graphics, tables,
footnotes, endnotes, TOC, TOF & Index. Closed the doc with no mishap &
pasted into a new doc, no problem. In fact, it went thru the prompts &
effectively responded to updating the appropriate fields when I pasted into
the new doc. I was also running Entourage & Safari at the time.

Only difference in config is that I'm running 10.4.2 rather than 10.4.3 (in
fact, I'm not even aware of a 10.4.3 release & can't find one on the Apple
site).

This suggests that something else is at play. Have the recommended
maintenance routines been performed recently (Repair Disk Permissions,
crons).? Could there be any font problems? What other
troubleshooting>results>symptoms are involved?

Regards |:>)