Word 2008 performance and stability issues

[eurovirus]

Hi at all!

Having upgraded to Office 2008 (and Word 2008 in particular), I have to say that I'm truly disappointed.

The overall performance is catastrophic, it takes up to 40 seconds to launch and when scrolling through large documents, it just doesn't fell as fluent as the windows-version does (yes I _have_ already disabled the WYSIWYG-fonts and yes i _have_ made a clean install).

Besides, I don't dare to estimate how much of my work Word has already destroyed - it always keeps crashing right at the moment I finish the last sentence of my 20-page essay... (no, the auto-recovery did not save it, I don't know why...)

With all these issues in mind (let alone the lack of compatibility with exposé which feels so beta-like), for the first timd I even regret having considered a Mac because Word is the program I use most and it keeps being the most annoying of all...

Is there anyone sharing the same "experience"? Can we expect these issues to be removed by the update coming in march?

Regards, Alex

PS: I'm currently running Office on a MacBook Core Duo 2.0 Ghz with 1 gig of ram.

 

[MC]

Hi at all!

Having upgraded to Office 2008 (and Word 2008 in particular), I have to say
that I'm truly disappointed.

The overall performance is catastrophic, it takes up to 40 seconds to launch
and when scrolling through large documents, it just doesn't fell as fluent as
the windows-version does (yes I _have_ already disabled the WYSIWYG-fonts and
yes i _have_ made a clean install).

Besides, I don't dare to estimate how much of my work Word has already
destroyed - it always keeps crashing right at the moment I finish the last
sentence of my 20-page essay... (no, the auto-recovery did not save it, I
don't know why...)

With all these issues in mind (let alone the lack of compatibility with
exposé which feels so beta-like), for the first timd I even regret having
considered a Mac because Word is the program I use most and it keeps being
the most annoying of all...

Is there anyone sharing the same "experience"? Can we expect these issues to
be removed by the update coming in march?

I've had my share of problems, but nothing like the instability you're
experiencing. I'm on the latest version of 10.5, PowerBook G4. The
biggest problem I have is that Word *hangs* every so often, as if it's
processing something very arcane in the background, and that diables all
apps including the Finderf, forup to 45 seconds... and then it cures
itself. I'm *hoping* this is the memory leak that people have talked
about, because it seems that MS is aware of it, and I'm hoping the
update will cure it.

Otherwise it seems slow to save, slow to launch -- which could be
because of the limitations of my hardware -- and I don't like some of
the new features very much - but that's nothing to get upset about.

 

[Juergen Fenn]

Otherwise it seems slow to save, slow to launch -- which could be
because of the limitations of my hardware --

Launching Word 2008 takes exactly 14 seconds on my MacBook 2 GHz, 1 GB
RAM, Tiger 10.4.11. Which is about twice the time Word 2004 took.

and I don't like some of
the new features very much - but that's nothing to get upset about.

Well, even the German macffice newsgroups are full of disappointed
users' complaints. It seems that Microsoft has done an even worse job
than otherwise. I'm looking forward to trying out the patches due to be
released from March 11th.

Jürgen.

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Jurgen:

The "Slow Launch" bug is OS-dependent. Anyone in OS 10.4 doesn't get it.
Anyone in OS 10.5 gets to make a cup of tea after launching...

Something in OS 10.5.2 REALLY pooched the thing.

OS 10.5 users are advised to either roll-back to 10.4 or use Word 2004 until
the fix comes out (which should be the middle of this month).

Cheers

Launching Word 2008 takes exactly 14 seconds on my MacBook 2 GHz, 1 GB
RAM, Tiger 10.4.11. Which is about twice the time Word 2004 took.


Well, even the German macffice newsgroups are full of disappointed
users' complaints. It seems that Microsoft has done an even worse job
than otherwise. I'm looking forward to trying out the patches due to be
released from March 11th.

Jürgen.

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

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
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McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Alex:

Thanks for adding your name: much more fun talking to a real person!

You have several problems. Some we can help with, and some we can't.

As I just responded to Jurgen, the slow launch issue is something that got
broken by OS 10.5.2. The only cure is to roll back to OS 10.4.11 and wait
for the fix. Word takes about five to eight seconds to launch here.

Now, you mention that you did an "upgrade"? If any components of Office
2004 remained visible to the installer, then sadly this was anything but a
"clean" installation. That's a bug in the design of the First-Run
mechanism. It imports a whole lot of settings from Office 2004 which are
incompatible. Here's the fix:

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
~/User/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.

Be thorough with this, if you leave any of these files behind Word 2008 will
find them and won't replace them. Do it right and Word will construct a
new, clean, set of preferences and everything should now work.

That should cure your crashing issues.

AutoRecovery is basically useless. It saves only the "changes" to a
document, not the document itself. So if you have NEVER saved a document,
there is nothing to save the changes to, so AutoRecovery saves nothing!

Go into Word>Preferences>Save and enable "Always make backup". That writes
the previous version out to the .bak file every time you save the document.

And forget AutoRecovery. It never has done anything useful in the past ten
years, and it still doesn't. Comand + s every time you pause to think, and
you will never again lose anything valuable

If it makes you feel any better, yes, everyone is sharing the same
experience. Which is why we were so vigorously advising people to go out
and buy the "Office 2004 upgrade deal" before Office 2008 came out. We
anticipated these issues, and wanted people to have Office 2004 to fall back
on. But we couldn't say so

I expect the update in March to remove some of these issues. I expect
another update inside of six months (probably 5.9 months...) later, after
which Office 2008 should be relatively stable.

However, it will remain a very severely cut-down version of Windows Office.
A Service Packs do not ADD functionality, only fixes to existing functions.

If you make your living with Word, you need to go back to the shop and help
yourself to a nice copy of Parallels, a copy of Windows XP or Windows Vista
Business Basic, and a copy of Office 2007. That combination runs well here
on THIS Macbook.

NOTE: You need to add memory!! Office won't run properly in Parallels with
less than 2GB of RAM, and I would filler 'er up, full as she will go if you
are adding some. Your laptop will max out at either 3 GB if it has the old
motherboard, or 4GB with the new one. Go as high as you can.

Buy the RAM anywhere else EXCEPT Apple and it will be half the price. Just
be very sure you have the right stuff: Macs are very fussy about their RAM,
and if it's wrong, it just won't work.

Hope this helps

Hi at all!

Having upgraded to Office 2008 (and Word 2008 in particular), I have to say
that I'm truly disappointed.

The overall performance is catastrophic, it takes up to 40 seconds to launch
and when scrolling through large documents, it just doesn't fell as fluent as
the windows-version does (yes I _have_ already disabled the WYSIWYG-fonts and
yes i _have_ made a clean install).

Besides, I don't dare to estimate how much of my work Word has already
destroyed - it always keeps crashing right at the moment I finish the last
sentence of my 20-page essay... (no, the auto-recovery did not save it, I
don't know why...)

With all these issues in mind (let alone the lack of compatibility with exposé
which feels so beta-like), for the first timd I even regret having considered
a Mac because Word is the program I use most and it keeps being the most
annoying of all...

Is there anyone sharing the same "experience"? Can we expect these issues to
be removed by the update coming in march?

Regards, Alex

PS: I'm currently running Office on a MacBook Core Duo 2.0 Ghz with 1 gig of
ram.

--
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

 

[eurovirus]

Hey John,

thanks heaps for the info. So I'll just hope the update will fix these problems or otherwise buy some more RAM and use Office 2007. What I've already done is trying Office 2003 using crossover (MUCH faster and MUCH more stable), but it's just so frustrating to have to use a programme that lacks the whole functionality of current apps just because I use a Mac...

While writing this, I wonder whether Microsoft is doing this to us on purpose to enforce the widespread opinion that Macs are just for consumers to organise their photos or make podcasts and not to do the "serious work"... In addition to that and corresponding to what you already stressed, I think this is the first time a Windows version of office is actually superior to the corresponding Mac version - if you compare the last corresponding versions (Office 2003 - 2004), they both seem rather similar with respect to their features and their ease of use. In contrast to that, even the early Beta of 2007 felt more stable and more easy to use than the so called "final" of 2008. And this can't be contradicted by Microsoft simply stating "we wanted to make 2008 more Mac-like"...

What do you think?

Best regards,
Alex

 

[MC]

While writing this, I wonder whether Microsoft is doing this to us on purpose
to enforce the widespread opinion that Macs are just for consumers to
organise their photos or make podcasts and not to do the "serious work"... In
addition to that and corresponding to what you already stressed, I think this
is the first time a Windows version of office is actually superior to the
corresponding Mac version - if you compare the last corresponding versions
(Office 2003 - 2004), they both seem rather similar with respect to their
features and their ease of use. In contrast to that, even the early Beta of
2007 felt more stable and more easy to use than the so called "final" of
2008. And this can't be contradicted by Microsoft simply stating "we wanted
to make 2008 more Mac-like"...

I don't think any software company -- least of all Microsoft -- would
put in hundreds of thousands of person-hours and who knows how much
money into developing software just to make Apple look bad. Much simpler
and cheaper to not release any Apple products and say "See? Macs don't
even run Word."

 

[Juergen Fenn]

While writing this, I wonder whether Microsoft is doing this to us on purpose to enforce the widespread opinion that Macs are just for consumersto organise their photos or make podcasts and not to do the "serious work"...

Well, MS Office for the Macintosh has a rather low priority for
Microsoft. As Jobs put it in his recent keynote address, MS Office is
the last major commercial product to be released as universal binary
(not requiring Rosetta any more).

BTW, there are lots of alternative products available for the Mac, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_office_suites
and every application has its pros and cons... I have updated to MS
Office 2008 only for the sake of docx etc. filters.

Jürgen.

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Alex:

I am interested in your experience with Crossover. I am using Parallels
here, and it works really nicely.

There are all sorts of reasons we got into this situation. Microsoft made a
really complex business decision. I happen to think they made the wrong
call, but the Microsoft Board does not seem to understand that it's obvious
that I would do a far better job than Steve Ballmer...

The way I do the sums, Mac owns the "Professional publications and graphics
space" plus the "Church newsletters and iPhotos space."

I believe that Microsoft is far more competitive in the Pro end than
Microsoft thinks it is.

Microsoft thinks it doesn't have the products to reach for the high end, and
it doesn't have the sales on the Mac to fund the development of such
products, so it has tried for the low end.

I believe Microsoft doesn't have the products to compete in the low end! It
instantly got creamed by Pages and iWork. There is NO DAMNED WAY that
Microsoft Office products will ever be easy enough for the low-end market.

But I publish 5,000-page books (multi-volume sets) direct to press from
Microsoft Word. I know damned well there's a thundering great V-8 engine
under the hood if you know where to look. Microsoft doesn't know how to use
its own damned products.

If you want proof of this, get a look at the press releases Microsoft puts
out. They're either been done in InDesign, or they're a mess

I've been around a long time. I watched Microsoft Word knock off System 55
and CompuGraphic on the mainframe. I saw it blow WordPerfect out of the
water. I watched it turn FrameMaker into a train-wreck. I've been around
to watch Word do a real "Thomas the Tank Engine", the little word-processor
that 'could', that took over the whole world.

IBM used to smile and point to their installed base of 15,000 users. Now, I
smile and point to our installed base of 900,000,000 users. IBM seems to
have discovered an urgent appointment in a different office

I believe we'll come back on the Mac. Because I know the product under the
skin. The problem is funding the development. There just aren't enough
sales on the Mac to support heavyweight software projects. Not yet.

But first we have to unpick all the eye-candy that has been inserted into
Microsoft Office to try to attract the low-end customer. The Elements
Gallery is a disaster. And so is the rubbish that's on it. Get it outta my
face, it's in the way!!

Lets have the Ribbon. It may not be Mac-like, but it works. It is a
quantum-leap forward in making Word fast and precise to drive.

Now, if you must have squeezy graphics so you can claim a new feature, bring
in proper data-driven graphics. Let me paste in a few columns of numbers
and make a graphic outta THAT! Give me Circle Diagrams that update
automatically from the project calendar. Let me query the budget in Excel
and show a timeline of how the spend is tracking against forecast. Let me
set up some cause-and-effect pairs and have Word/PowerPoint/Excel draw the
fishbone diagram for me. If we must have bling, let's have USEFUL bling

In the meantime: Software quality needs to improve four orders of
magnitude, guys. Professional software development consists of producing
bullet-proof code, not bullet-proof excuses!!

{Ahhhh} I feel so much better now

THAT's what I think

Hey John,

thanks heaps for the info. So I'll just hope the update will fix these
problems or otherwise buy some more RAM and use Office 2007. What I've already
done is trying Office 2003 using crossover (MUCH faster and MUCH more stable),
but it's just so frustrating to have to use a programme that lacks the whole
functionality of current apps just because I use a Mac...

While writing this, I wonder whether Microsoft is doing this to us on purpose
to enforce the widespread opinion that Macs are just for consumers to organise
their photos or make podcasts and not to do the "serious work"... In addition
to that and corresponding to what you already stressed, I think this is the
first time a Windows version of office is actually superior to the
corresponding Mac version - if you compare the last corresponding versions
(Office 2003 - 2004), they both seem rather similar with respect to their
features and their ease of use. In contrast to that, even the early Beta of
2007 felt more stable and more easy to use than the so called "final" of 2008.
And this can't be contradicted by Microsoft simply stating "we wanted to make
2008 more Mac-like"...

What do you think?

Best regards,
Alex

--
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

 

[Phillip Jones]

I like your dissertation below. I have one quibble with one Point.

MS has the funds, they just don't want to commit those funds. Gates has
so much money he could give 20 million away every year until he got to
the ripe old age of 220. And Balmer is just what Gates put in place as
Puppet.

Its not a question of sales , its a question of desire. It one thing if
it was dying Platform. But on the contrary, because of all the bugs and
nasties out there . Mac. Linux and Unix are the up and coming Platforms
because they far safer.
Next to wal-Mart MS is probably the second rich company in the world.
They throw in a extra 100 million year and it wouldn't even be a blip on
the balance sheet.

Hi Alex:

I am interested in your experience with Crossover. I am using Parallels
here, and it works really nicely.

There are all sorts of reasons we got into this situation. Microsoft made a
really complex business decision. I happen to think they made the wrong
call, but the Microsoft Board does not seem to understand that it's obvious
that I would do a far better job than Steve Ballmer...

The way I do the sums, Mac owns the "Professional publications and graphics
space" plus the "Church newsletters and iPhotos space."

I believe that Microsoft is far more competitive in the Pro end than
Microsoft thinks it is.

Microsoft thinks it doesn't have the products to reach for the high end, and
it doesn't have the sales on the Mac to fund the development of such
products, so it has tried for the low end.

I believe Microsoft doesn't have the products to compete in the low end! It
instantly got creamed by Pages and iWork. There is NO DAMNED WAY that
Microsoft Office products will ever be easy enough for the low-end market.

But I publish 5,000-page books (multi-volume sets) direct to press from
Microsoft Word. I know damned well there's a thundering great V-8 engine
under the hood if you know where to look. Microsoft doesn't know how to use
its own damned products.

If you want proof of this, get a look at the press releases Microsoft puts
out. They're either been done in InDesign, or they're a mess

I've been around a long time. I watched Microsoft Word knock off System 55
and CompuGraphic on the mainframe. I saw it blow WordPerfect out of the
water. I watched it turn FrameMaker into a train-wreck. I've been around
to watch Word do a real "Thomas the Tank Engine", the little word-processor
that 'could', that took over the whole world.

IBM used to smile and point to their installed base of 15,000 users. Now, I
smile and point to our installed base of 900,000,000 users. IBM seems to
have discovered an urgent appointment in a different office

I believe we'll come back on the Mac. Because I know the product under the
skin. The problem is funding the development. There just aren't enough
sales on the Mac to support heavyweight software projects. Not yet.

But first we have to unpick all the eye-candy that has been inserted into
Microsoft Office to try to attract the low-end customer. The Elements
Gallery is a disaster. And so is the rubbish that's on it. Get it outta my
face, it's in the way!!

Lets have the Ribbon. It may not be Mac-like, but it works. It is a
quantum-leap forward in making Word fast and precise to drive.

Now, if you must have squeezy graphics so you can claim a new feature, bring
in proper data-driven graphics. Let me paste in a few columns of numbers
and make a graphic outta THAT! Give me Circle Diagrams that update
automatically from the project calendar. Let me query the budget in Excel
and show a timeline of how the spend is tracking against forecast. Let me
set up some cause-and-effect pairs and have Word/PowerPoint/Excel draw the
fishbone diagram for me. If we must have bling, let's have USEFUL bling

In the meantime: Software quality needs to improve four orders of
magnitude, guys. Professional software development consists of producing
bullet-proof code, not bullet-proof excuses!!

{Ahhhh} I feel so much better now

THAT's what I think

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[whitman]

This method of John's for lessening the crashiness of Office 2008...

Hi Alex:
&gt; Here's the fix:
&gt; 1) Quit all Microsoft applications.
&gt; 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.
&gt; 3) Find and drag the file Normal.dotm to your desktop. Unless you have
moved it, it should be in
~/User/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates/
&gt; 4) If the following files exist, Remove or rename them:
&gt; ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Word Settings (10)

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Word Settings (11)
&gt; User/Library/Preferences/com.Microsoft.Word.plist
&gt; User/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2008 (the whole folder!)
&gt; 5) Now re-start Word 2008 and it should be OK.
&gt; Be thorough with this, if you leave any of these files behind Word 2008 will
find them and won't replace them. Do it right and Word will construct a&gt; new, clean, set of preferences and everything should now work.
&gt; That should cure your crashing issues.

.... what happens to Word 2004 that I'm keeping here as (essential for now) backup if I get rid of its normal templates in this way?

Thanks,
Whitman

 

[CyberTaz]

Hello Whitman -

I'd suggest that you wait for John to confirm this, but since it's probably
beddy-bye time Down Under...

If you don't have any customizations save to Normal (2004) there should be
no problem at all. Word 2004 will generate a new Normal on next launch just
like it generates new prefs. It's just that *pre-existing* Normals are known
to have caused the type of conflict you reported.

If you *do* have customizations I'd suggest that rather than deleting the
most current Normal (which should be in the User/Documents/Microsoft User
Data folder) that you rename or move it instead [NOTE: only *that* copy of
Normal - dispose of any others that may be scattered around elsewhere]. Once
you launch 2004 to create a new Normal you can then use the Organizer to
copy back any styles, custom toolbars, etc. from the old Normal.

FWIW - I've been running 2004 side-by-side with 2008 from the Beta stage
right through the released version with no problem at all

 

[John McGhie]

Bob is completely correct.

For the fix to have the best effect, it would be best to ensure that the
Normals are not around while Word 2008 is building its Normal.dotm.

However, yesterday's update should have cured the issue of importing crud
from Word 2004's Normal.

So in future, once you have applied the 12.0.1 Update successfully, you can
leave the Word 2004 Normal in place.

Cheers

Hello Whitman -

I'd suggest that you wait for John to confirm this, but since it's probably
beddy-bye time Down Under...

If you don't have any customizations save to Normal (2004) there should be
no problem at all. Word 2004 will generate a new Normal on next launch just
like it generates new prefs. It's just that *pre-existing* Normals are known
to have caused the type of conflict you reported.

If you *do* have customizations I'd suggest that rather than deleting the
most current Normal (which should be in the User/Documents/Microsoft User
Data folder) that you rename or move it instead [NOTE: only *that* copy of
Normal - dispose of any others that may be scattered around elsewhere]. Once
you launch 2004 to create a new Normal you can then use the Organizer to
copy back any styles, custom toolbars, etc. from the old Normal.

FWIW - I've been running 2004 side-by-side with 2008 from the Beta stage
right through the released version with no problem at all

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

 

[whitman]

Hello Bob and John.

Thanks for the explanation. I did install the 12.0.1 update, so now, without doing any of the stuff discussed, I will be immune to this crashiness, yes?

Felicitations,

Whitman.

 

[John McGhie]

You have had "one" injection. It takes a course of THREE injections to
confer immunity to poliomyelitis

Expect another Service Pack in a few months, and one after that...

I assume that you deleted Normal.dotm? If not, do that now. The effect of
the current fix is that Word 2008 will no longer suck in cruft from previous
versions.

Hello Bob and John.

Thanks for the explanation. I did install the 12.0.1 update, so now, without
doing any of the stuff discussed, I will be immune to this crashiness, yes?

Felicitations,

Whitman.

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