Word 2004 v 11.2.1 'unexpected quit' / resolution

G

Greg Ucker

Greetings,

I have been running MacOS 10.4.5 (Tiger) and Microsoft Word 2004 11.2.1
and for several months I have been unable to open many documents
originating from both internal and external servers. Many of these
docs were created on Windows machines (may or may not be relevant).
Attempting to open one of these Word documents would cause Word to
"quit unexpectedly". Recovery attempts resulted in garbled text and
formatting, or another crash.

I've been investigating this for quite some time and all suggested
remedies on the web revolving around trashing font caches, user prefs,
changing privileges did not work. What did work was completely removing
Microsoft Office from my machine then reinstalling Office 2004 11.0 and
updating to 11.1 (more on that later). I strictly adhered to the
removal instructions provided at

http///word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/RemoveReinstall.htm

(note if using Safari, you must hit the reload button of the browser
several times to be able to view the page).

Prior to removal, you may wish to follow the "Backing up your
preferences and settings page" instructions at

http///word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/backupprefs.htm

Removal options in the Remove app -
I removed everything, including the extensions and libraries. I don't
know if this is necessary, but that's what I did and it worked. This
may affect other MS products, particularly Outlook (see popup warning
on option check box).

I also used spotlight to make sure nothing labeled "microsoft" or
"word" was left on the machine (to my knowledge just a couple things
for VirtualPC were left undisturbed on the machine).

Office Updates -
After performing the removal and reinstallation of Office 2004 v11.0, I
tried the 'offending documents' and Word read them flawlessly. I then
updated to Office 11.2.1 using the combined 11.0->11.2.1 updater via
the 'Autoupdate' feature. Another test with an offending doc caused
Word to crash in the same way as before.

After another round of removal and reinstallation to 11.0, I tried the
11.1 updater, available on the www.mactopia.com site. Word worked fine
with an offending doc, but I got an error message about accessing the
Microsoft Frameworks library. You may or may not get this as there were
some undeleted files in the trash that may have confused the
application. I deleted the ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/ folder and
its contents and that seemed to solve the issue. Always remember to
empty the trash before invoking any Office product after the
reinstallation and updates!

I did not try the SP 2 updater, as there are warnings that it may be
unstable. It would appear that the 11.2.1 updater is at least partly
responsible. For now I'm camping at version 11.1 (still working after a
day of use).

Greg
 
J

John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]

Hi Greg:

Many thanks for that. That kind of detailed investigation and documentation
is just what we need to make progress on getting these issues solved.

I've put this through to the developers: they may come back to you for more
information.

Cheers


Greetings,

I have been running MacOS 10.4.5 (Tiger) and Microsoft Word 2004 11.2.1
and for several months I have been unable to open many documents
originating from both internal and external servers. Many of these
docs were created on Windows machines (may or may not be relevant).
Attempting to open one of these Word documents would cause Word to
"quit unexpectedly". Recovery attempts resulted in garbled text and
formatting, or another crash.

I've been investigating this for quite some time and all suggested
remedies on the web revolving around trashing font caches, user prefs,
changing privileges did not work. What did work was completely removing
Microsoft Office from my machine then reinstalling Office 2004 11.0 and
updating to 11.1 (more on that later). I strictly adhered to the
removal instructions provided at

http///word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/RemoveReinstall.htm

(note if using Safari, you must hit the reload button of the browser
several times to be able to view the page).

Prior to removal, you may wish to follow the "Backing up your
preferences and settings page" instructions at

http///word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/backupprefs.htm

Removal options in the Remove app -
I removed everything, including the extensions and libraries. I don't
know if this is necessary, but that's what I did and it worked. This
may affect other MS products, particularly Outlook (see popup warning
on option check box).

I also used spotlight to make sure nothing labeled "microsoft" or
"word" was left on the machine (to my knowledge just a couple things
for VirtualPC were left undisturbed on the machine).

Office Updates -
After performing the removal and reinstallation of Office 2004 v11.0, I
tried the 'offending documents' and Word read them flawlessly. I then
updated to Office 11.2.1 using the combined 11.0->11.2.1 updater via
the 'Autoupdate' feature. Another test with an offending doc caused
Word to crash in the same way as before.

After another round of removal and reinstallation to 11.0, I tried the
11.1 updater, available on the www.mactopia.com site. Word worked fine
with an offending doc, but I got an error message about accessing the
Microsoft Frameworks library. You may or may not get this as there were
some undeleted files in the trash that may have confused the
application. I deleted the ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/ folder and
its contents and that seemed to solve the issue. Always remember to
empty the trash before invoking any Office product after the
reinstallation and updates!

I did not try the SP 2 updater, as there are warnings that it may be
unstable. It would appear that the 11.2.1 updater is at least partly
responsible. For now I'm camping at version 11.1 (still working after a
day of use).

Greg

--

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

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410
 
J

Jeffrey Weston [MSFT]

Hey Greg,

Are you opening the documents while they are on the server or copying them
over to your local drive?

What is your environment like? Are you using Remote Home Directories with
Tiger?

One other trouble shooting method that you could try is to create a new user
account and install MacOffice into its user home folder. Then upgrade it to
11.1 and try it with the offending documents and then upgrade that to 11.2.1
and try again. As long as your new user account does not have access to your
original MacOffice folder, the two versions (and the files they install)
should not affect each other.

If it works, then there could be something else going wrong with your
regular user account.

Hope this helps,
--
Jeffrey Weston
Mac Word Test
Macintosh Business Unit
Microsoft

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
 
G

Greg Ucker

Hi Jeffrey,

It makes no difference if the file is on the server or has been copieed
to my machine. Both cause the 11.2.1 crash.

RE: Fresh installation in new user account. Thanks for the suggestion,
but I had other folks running Tiger and 11.2.1 try to read the same
files and their Word crashes as well. I've spoken with several
Tiger/11.2.1 folks at NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center where these docs
originate (on PC's I think): they too cannot read them and experience
exactly the same behaviour. For this reason, I do not think the new
user exercise worthwhile.

If you would like me to send you a 'guaranteed Tiger/W11.2.1 crash'
example document, I would certainly be happy to. (note that I can read
it under 11.1, so it almost certainly has something to do with the file
structure and the 11.2.1 upgrade)

Thanks,
Greg
 
J

Jeffrey Weston [MSFT]

Hey Greg,

If you could send me that document, it would be great! Please make sure
there is no confidential or personal info in it before you send.

You can send it to: (e-mail address removed)

Thanks a lot!
--
Jeffrey Weston
Mac Word Test
Macintosh Business Unit
Microsoft

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
 
J

Jeffrey Weston [MSFT]

Hey Greg, thank you for sending the document.

We have tracked down the cause of the crash to one of the many fixes and
improvements we made in the Word 11.2 update. As your detailed investigation
suggested when you upgrade to 11.2, the document will crash on open but will
work fine on any version less than Word 11.2.

To avoid this particular issue for now, I would recommend holding off
upgrading to 11.2 until this issue is resolved in a forth coming patch.

Until we resolve this issue, you may be able to work around it by opening
and re-saving affected documents in MacWord 11.1 or WinWord 2003.

Thanks

--
Jeffrey Weston
Mac Word Test
Macintosh Business Unit
Microsoft

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
 

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