Word 2008 keeps crashing

[canadanger]

I recently purchased a Macbook Pro and installed Office 2008. Whenever I type in Word or copy/paste from another document, I either get an error that says "Insufficient memory" or the application freezes and will not respond. Is there something I can do or just have to wait for an update?

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

I recently purchased a Macbook Pro and installed Office 2008. Whenever I type
in Word or copy/paste from another document, I either get an error that says
"Insufficient memory" or the application freezes and will not respond. Is
there something I can do or just have to wait for an update?

You shouldn't have to wait for an update. Something is pretty fishy. Did you
ever run the Office test drive which came pre installed on your Macbook Pro?
Did you let the Office 2008 installer remove the test drive? I also
installed onto a new Macbook Pro and have had no trouble at all.

 

[canadanger]

I removed and installed Office 2004 when I purchased the laptop. I then installed Office 2008 and let it remove the old versions of Office, it only found Office 2004.

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

I removed and installed Office 2004 when I purchased the laptop. I then
installed Office 2008 and let it remove the old versions of Office, it only
found Office 2004.

That should be fine. Unfortunately, I¹m out of ideas. Maybe someone else
will respond.

 

[canadanger]

Thanks for the help, I hope someone has solved this issue somewhere...

 

[canadanger]

I solved my issue. There was a picture in the middle of my sentence (for super and subscript stacked on top), which was crashing my Word. I deleted the picture and have avoided it. It seems that Word 2008 has a real problem with these imported pictures.

 

[KLarson]

Hi, I'm having a heck of a time with Word 2008 crashing on me, too. And, yes, I'm creating documents that include a lot of clipart (that I've downloaded from the online Microsoft clipart gallery). I've had the new app for about 2 weeks now. I have the home/student edition and am on a eMac with OS 10.4.11 and a 1GHz PowerPC G4 processor. This evening, for the first time, I'm getting "not enough memory" messages (although it is not the first time I've had the new Word crash when I'm inserting an image). I have 640 Mo of SDRAM memory installed. Any help would be appreciated... in the meantime, I'm saving my files every time I touch a clipart image... which is time-consuming, but at least I don't lose a whole page when it crashes... TIA

 

[Guest]

I have noticed that Word 2008 runs kinda slower than the 2004 version on my mac which has 2G of ram. I have a friend with a G4 Powerbook with 512 of ram who also installed 2008, and he also says that it is running very slow, but has not noticed any crashes. I am not 100% sure, but with that much clipart on one document, I would think about more ram. Other than that, hunting on the web had very little solutions for me.

 

[KLarson]

Thanks for the input... I *have* noticed that Word 2008 takes a lot longer to open than my old version... hmmm... yep... I guess adding some more ram wouldn't hurt. I *am* having fun exploring Word 2008, though, in spite of the crashes.

 

[John McGhie]

If you have only 640 Mb of RAM installed, I am astonished to hear that Word
2008 is running at all

It needs 2GB to work properly. Sorry about that It will also slow down
even worse on OS 10.5 on a PPC processor, so don't even think about going
there

Hope this helps

Hi, I'm having a heck of a time with Word 2008 crashing on me, too. And, yes,
I'm creating documents that include a lot of clipart (that I've downloaded
from the online Microsoft clipart gallery). I've had the new app for about 2
weeks now. I have the home/student edition and am on a eMac with OS 10.4.11
and a 1GHz PowerPC G4 processor. This evening, for the first time, I'm getting
"not enough memory" messages (although it is not the first time I've had the
new Word crash when I'm inserting an image). I have 640 Mo of SDRAM memory
installed. Any help would be appreciated... in the meantime, I'm saving my
files every time I touch a clipart image... which is time-consuming, but at
least I don't lose a whole page when it crashes... TIA

--
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, Consultant Technical Writer
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50

 

[KLarson]

Thank you for your input, John. I'd forgotten that following posted minimum system requirements sometimes results in minimum functionality in an application (elsewhere on this site, Microsoft lists the requirements as: "… Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (500 MHz or faster) processor … OS X version 10.4.9 or later …Memory: 512 MB of RAM or more [How much more?] …1.5 GB of available hard disk space"... all requirements that my computer, in theory, meets (or exceeds a tiny bit... at least when you look at the lower end of the requirements...). I'll just have to try adding more RAM for now, and see how much that helps... it's going to be a while before I move up to one of the Intel Macs... oh well... :-/

 

[KLarson]

Okay... after a bit more head-scratching... It occurred to me that I've been working on and saving these clipart-rich documents as .doc files... thinking that if I try to open a .docx file on another computer, there's a good chance it won't work (at least for the present & very near future)... aha! Maybe that was what has been munching up that little bit of extra memory that I've got to play with. So I saved them as .docx files. Ta da! *No problem at all* pulling the same clipart from one file to another (.docx duplicates of files I created in Word 2008, but saved as .doc files). And the .docx duplicates were smaller than the .doc originals, to boot. I'll just save the final version as a pdf if I need to open it in a different computer (which may not have the latest version of Word).

 

[Diane Ross]

minimum
system requirements sometimes results in minimum functionality

Min requirements = being able to turn it on... not actual use

 

[John McGhie]

Yeah, sorry, I should have thought...

The .docx format is about half to a quarter the size of the .doc format.
That's one of the reasons for the change.

And Office 2008 does get a lot more efficient when working in .docx than in
..doc. When you work in the old format, it has to convert everything
backwards and forwards: it can't run internally in the "old" format.

So you've solved your own problem

How much more? Everything you got!! As I said: Office 2008 works nicely
on an Intel 2GHz core 2 duo with 2 GB of RAM. Memory pays greater dividends
than CPU speed: Word is not particularly CPU intensive.

Hope this helps

Okay... after a bit more head-scratching... It occurred to me that I've been
working on and saving these clipart-rich documents as .doc files... thinking
that if I try to open a .docx file on another computer, there's a good chance
it won't work (at least for the present & very near future)... aha! Maybe that
was what has been munching up that little bit of extra memory that I've got to
play with. So I saved them as .docx files. Ta da! *No problem at all* pulling
the same clipart from one file to another (.docx duplicates of files I created
in Word 2008, but saved as .doc files). And the .docx duplicates were smaller
than the .doc originals, to boot. I'll just save the final version as a pdf if
I need to open it in a different computer (which may not have the latest
version of Word).

--
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, Consultant Technical Writer
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50

 

[Curt Laird (MSFT)]

Hi Klarson,
I'd like to get some of these documents from you if possible. I think it's
important for us to determine the cause of the crashes you're encountering.
If you could supply me with a crash log as well that would be great.

Feel free to send them directly to me (my email is below).



Thanks,


Curt

Hi, I'm having a heck of a time with Word 2008 crashing on me, too. And, yes,
I'm creating documents that include a lot of clipart (that I've downloaded
from the online Microsoft clipart gallery). I've had the new app for about 2
weeks now. I have the home/student edition and am on a eMac with OS 10.4.11
and a 1GHz PowerPC G4 processor. This evening, for the first time, I'm getting
"not enough memory" messages (although it is not the first time I've had the
new Word crash when I'm inserting an image). I have 640 Mo of SDRAM memory
installed. Any help would be appreciated... in the meantime, I'm saving my
files every time I touch a clipart image... which is time-consuming, but at
least I don't lose a whole page when it crashes... TIA

--
curt:laird
software development engineer in test
microsoft macbu | word:mac
mailto:[email protected] (remove ³ONLINE² to send me mail)

Sent with pride using Entourage 2008!

This posting is provided ³AS IS² with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[KLarson]

Hi Curt, I will send the documents to you. Thanks for your interest in the problem.