Word 2008 crashes on launch

D

dladuke

Hello,

I'm running Microsoft Word 12.1.2 (080729) and Mac OS X 10.5.5 on a
MacBook Pro Core Due 2.16 GHz.

I recently created a copy of my disk drive to a larger drive (320 GB)
using Carbon Copy Cloner. I'm now using the larger drive as my primary
boot drive.

Every application seems to be working fine now except Microsoft Word.

The errors I get are:

I launch Word.
I get a Word dialog box that says "You are working without a Word work
file and memory is nearly full. Save your work." I click OK.
I get a new Word dialog box that says "Word cannot open this document
template. (Document Elements.dotx). I click OK.
Word never finishes launching, but eventually winds up using large
amounts of CPU (>60%) until I force quit it.

What I've done:

- repaired permissions using Disk Utility, Cocktail, MacPilot and
AppleJack
- attempted to reinstall the latest Office Update (it failed)
- followed these instructions:

*********snip*********
1) Quit all Microsoft applications.
2) Track down all instances of pre-2008 Normal template on your
computer,
and drag them to your desktop. The file is called simply "Normal" and
has
no extension.
3) Find and drag the file Normal.dotm to your desktop. Unless you
have
moved it, it should be in
/Users/ ~ /Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User
Templates/
4) If the following files exist, Remove or rename them:
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Word Settings (10)
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Word Settings (11)
User/Library/Preferences/com.Microsoft.Word.plist
User/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2008 (the whole folder!)
5) Now re-start Word 2008 and it should be OK.
*********snip*********

- followed these instructions:

*********snip*********
The first thing I would suggest is to create a folder on the desktop
and
drag ALL of the contents of the Microsoft User Data folder to it, then
start
Entourage.
All things being well, Entourage will create a new database.
*********snip*********

- followed these instructions

*********snip*********
First, you need to locate the temporary directory. This directory is
stored as an environment variable. Log in as the affected user, launch
Terminal, and take a peek at the TMPDIR variable:

Code:
user$ printenv TMPDIR
You will see something that looks like this:

Code:
/var/folders/0A/0A3LRr93GcyRbaTV7BhdIk+++TI/-Tmp-/
The exact path will be different from user to user, machine to
machine. It's designed to be unique and unpredictable. Additionally,
since /var is a symlink to /private/var, the actual path is (using
this example):

Code:
/private/var/folders/0A/0A3LRr93GcyRbaTV7BhdIk+++TI/-Tmp-/
Everything up to the last two parts of this path (the really long
random character section and the section at the very end) should be
owned by root:wheel. That's normal.

What you want to know is whether or not the user can write to the last
two parts of the path:

Code:
user$ ls -lad /var/folders/0A/0A3LRr93GcyRbaTV7BhdIk+++TI
rwxr-xr-x 17 mikey mikey 578 Jun 12 10:32 /var/folders/0A/
0A3LRr93GcyRbaTV7BhdIk+++TI
user$ ls -lad /var/folders/0A/0A3LRr93GcyRbaTV7BhdIk+++TI/-Tmp-/
rwx------ 17 mikey mikey 578 Jun 12 10:32 /var/folders/0A/
0A3LRr93GcyRbaTV7BhdIk+++TI/-Tmp-/
These two directories need to be writable by the user. On the machine
I encountered, they were erroneously owned by root, and therefore the
user could not write to either of them, and couldn't even read from
the -Tmp- directory.

So let's fix that:

Code:
user$ sudo chown -R user:user /var/folders/0A/0A3LRr93GcyRbaTV7BhdIk++
+TI/
If the permissions settings themselves still don't give write
abilities to the owner (which is now the user), you need to fix that,
too:

Code:
user$ sudo chmod -R u+w /var/folders/0A/0A3LRr93GcyRbaTV7BhdIk+++TI/
The -R option on both of these commands makes the changes for
everything inside the long random-character temp directory, so by
doing this, you've also fixed the -Tmp- directory inside that one.

Word will now work correctly.
*********snip*********

Bottom line: nothing has worked. With the last attempt, I get nothing
when I type printenv TMPDIR.

I'm wondering if there is anything else I can try.

Thanks,

D
 
J

John McGhie

Yes, there is.

Your last line is diagnostic: your TMPDIR has not been defined. You need to
define it and set the correct permissions.

If you search MacFixit, you will find the recipe for doing that.

Cheers


Hello,

I'm running Microsoft Word 12.1.2 (080729) and Mac OS X 10.5.5 on a
MacBook Pro Core Due 2.16 GHz.

I recently created a copy of my disk drive to a larger drive (320 GB)
using Carbon Copy Cloner. I'm now using the larger drive as my primary
boot drive.

Every application seems to be working fine now except Microsoft Word.

The errors I get are:

I launch Word.
I get a Word dialog box that says "You are working without a Word work
file and memory is nearly full. Save your work." I click OK.
I get a new Word dialog box that says "Word cannot open this document
template. (Document Elements.dotx). I click OK.
Word never finishes launching, but eventually winds up using large
amounts of CPU (>60%) until I force quit it.

What I've done:

- repaired permissions using Disk Utility, Cocktail, MacPilot and
AppleJack
- attempted to reinstall the latest Office Update (it failed)
- followed these instructions:

*********snip*********
1) Quit all Microsoft applications.
2) Track down all instances of pre-2008 Normal template on your
computer,
and drag them to your desktop. The file is called simply "Normal" and
has
no extension.
3) Find and drag the file Normal.dotm to your desktop. Unless you
have
moved it, it should be in
/Users/ ~ /Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User
Templates/
4) If the following files exist, Remove or rename them:
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Word Settings (10)
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Word Settings (11)
User/Library/Preferences/com.Microsoft.Word.plist
User/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2008 (the whole folder!)
5) Now re-start Word 2008 and it should be OK.
*********snip*********

- followed these instructions:

*********snip*********
The first thing I would suggest is to create a folder on the desktop
and
drag ALL of the contents of the Microsoft User Data folder to it, then
start
Entourage.
All things being well, Entourage will create a new database.
*********snip*********

- followed these instructions

*********snip*********
First, you need to locate the temporary directory. This directory is
stored as an environment variable. Log in as the affected user, launch
Terminal, and take a peek at the TMPDIR variable:

Code:
user$ printenv TMPDIR
You will see something that looks like this:

Code:
/var/folders/0A/0A3LRr93GcyRbaTV7BhdIk+++TI/-Tmp-/
The exact path will be different from user to user, machine to
machine. It's designed to be unique and unpredictable. Additionally,
since /var is a symlink to /private/var, the actual path is (using
this example):

Code:
/private/var/folders/0A/0A3LRr93GcyRbaTV7BhdIk+++TI/-Tmp-/
Everything up to the last two parts of this path (the really long
random character section and the section at the very end) should be
owned by root:wheel. That's normal.

What you want to know is whether or not the user can write to the last
two parts of the path:

Code:
user$ ls -lad /var/folders/0A/0A3LRr93GcyRbaTV7BhdIk+++TI
rwxr-xr-x 17 mikey mikey 578 Jun 12 10:32 /var/folders/0A/
0A3LRr93GcyRbaTV7BhdIk+++TI
user$ ls -lad /var/folders/0A/0A3LRr93GcyRbaTV7BhdIk+++TI/-Tmp-/
rwx------ 17 mikey mikey 578 Jun 12 10:32 /var/folders/0A/
0A3LRr93GcyRbaTV7BhdIk+++TI/-Tmp-/
These two directories need to be writable by the user. On the machine
I encountered, they were erroneously owned by root, and therefore the
user could not write to either of them, and couldn't even read from
the -Tmp- directory.

So let's fix that:

Code:
user$ sudo chown -R user:user /var/folders/0A/0A3LRr93GcyRbaTV7BhdIk++
+TI/
If the permissions settings themselves still don't give write
abilities to the owner (which is now the user), you need to fix that,
too:

Code:
user$ sudo chmod -R u+w /var/folders/0A/0A3LRr93GcyRbaTV7BhdIk+++TI/
The -R option on both of these commands makes the changes for
everything inside the long random-character temp directory, so by
doing this, you've also fixed the -Tmp- directory inside that one.

Word will now work correctly.
*********snip*********

Bottom line: nothing has worked. With the last attempt, I get nothing
when I type printenv TMPDIR.

I'm wondering if there is anything else I can try.

Thanks,

D

--

Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Nhulunbuy, NT, Australia. mailto:[email protected]
 
C

Caroline_O.

I'm having the same problem Diaduke is. After moving the contents of my hard drive to a bigger hard drive, I get the error messages Diaduke gets when I try to launch Word 2008 and it won't run. So far I have only uninstalled and reinstalled Office, then run the May software update. I also tried deleting the Normal template. None of this helped.

Do I have to do all the steps Diaduke lists in the original post above?? They didn't help him, so I'd like to cut to the chase. John M., I don't understand what you mean by "your TMPDIR has not been defined. You need to define it and set the correct permissions." I searched "define TMPDIR" on MacFixit and got no matches. Please help, someone! Thanks very much in advance.
 
J

John McGhie

Hi Caroline:

Sorry, I should have given you the URL, but I was off-line at the time and I
couldn't remember it...

http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=90701

Read it all very carefully, and if you are not confident in Terminal with
sudo, find someone who is -- this is the deep end of the pool!

Cheers


I'm having the same problem Diaduke is. After moving the contents of my hard
drive to a bigger hard drive, I get the error messages Diaduke gets when I try
to launch Word 2008 and it won't run. So far I have only uninstalled and
reinstalled Office, then run the May software update. I also tried deleting
the Normal template. None of this helped.

Do I have to do all the steps Diaduke lists in the original post above?? They
didn't help him, so I'd like to cut to the chase. John M., I don't understand
what you mean by "your TMPDIR has not been defined. You need to define it and
set the correct permissions." I searched "define TMPDIR" on MacFixit and got
no matches. Please help, someone! Thanks very much in advance.

--

Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Nhulunbuy, NT, Australia. mailto:[email protected]
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Top