Word lost dictionary after minor OS update to 10.4.11

[Kooler_King]

Version: 2004
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
Processor: Power PC

I recently performed a minor update from OSX 10.4.8 to 10.4.11, along with Quicktime & iTunes update (to work with my new iPod).

Previous to this, Word worked fine. After this minor OS update to 10.4.11, Word lost my custom dictionary and the ability to add words to the one there.

Coincidently (or not) Entourage lost my settings and e-mail account info. Maybe other Office components lost prefs & settings as well?

I assume there is some common info or prefs file or folder for Office 2004 components that was lost or corrupted during the OS update?

I have a disk image of my entire drive at OS 10.4.8 (before the OS patch) ... How do I go about identifying which MS or Office prefs or data files to copy back to get all my Word (and Office) stuff back? Thanks for any ideas.

 

[John McGhie]

My first suggestion would be to run Disk Utility and "Repair Permissions".

Pray that fixes it Doing a partial restore of preference files to an
updated OS is a really dangerous move

Cheers

Version: 2004
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
Processor: Power PC

I recently performed a minor update from OSX 10.4.8 to 10.4.11, along with
Quicktime & iTunes update (to work with my new iPod).

Previous to this, Word worked fine. After this minor OS update to 10.4.11,
Word lost my custom dictionary and the ability to add words to the one there.

Coincidently (or not) Entourage lost my settings and e-mail account info.
Maybe other Office components lost prefs & settings as well?

I assume there is some common info or prefs file or folder for Office 2004
components that was lost or corrupted during the OS update?

I have a disk image of my entire drive at OS 10.4.8 (before the OS patch) ...
How do I go about identifying which MS or Office prefs or data files to copy
back to get all my Word (and Office) stuff back? Thanks for any ideas.

--

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]

 

[Kooler_King]

Yes, I should have mentioned that I always run the disk utility & permissions repair before & after an upgrade, as I did this time.

I read somewhere else that one of the OS system folders that MS Office relies on might get renamed during an OS update, I guess I'll pursue that path of repair.

It's odd though, that if this is a common occurance during an OS update that there wouldn't already be a fix from MS with a tool or utility to fix it.

 

[John McGhie]

I wouldn't call it "common". I can think of one or two other reports.

And there is a fix on the way: it's in test now.

Yes, I should have mentioned that I always run the disk utility & permissions
repair before & after an upgrade, as I did this time.

I read somewhere else that one of the OS system folders that MS Office relies
on might get renamed during an OS update, I guess I'll pursue that path of
repair.

It's odd though, that if this is a common occurance during an OS update that
there wouldn't already be a fix from MS with a tool or utility to fix it.

--

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]

 

[Kooler_King]

I finally figured out what happened and fixed it ...

I had renamed my documents folder when I was "cleaning up the clutter". This was not a problem with mapping to the MS database ... that is, until I performed the OS X update. This forced the creation of a new documents folder into which MS Office promptly created a new a new set of user settings and database.

When I renamed this old documents folder back to its original, my MS stuff came back, this is everything but the last 2 weeks of my e-mail which is the point at which the trouble begin ... I'm supposing my ISP's server dumped those when I was signing-on from another OS partition.

Oh well, live & learn ... thanks for ideas.

 

[Clive Huggan]

That's insight for you, KK!

Thanks for giving us the feedback.

CH
===

 

[John McGhie]

Thanks for getting back to us! I guess we've all learned this the hard way
-- I certainly did

Trust me, there is no fix for "User renamed some folders" either included or
planned in the next (or any future...) updates.

Under Unix (OS X) a file's "Name" is the whole string, including the folder
names all the way back to the volume name.

If you change any part of that, Unix won't find your file (and so your
applications can't either...)

This is a little different from the old Apple OS, which used to maintain a
look-up list that associated the file name with the file. You could create
any number of aliases to the file and have it appear as any name you liked.
So long as Mac OS knew where the original was, everything would still work.

You can still do this under Unix, but unless you manually add Aliases or
Symbolic Links, Unix only knows about the current file name. If you change
that, Unix now refers to the file as a different thing.

So what I am trying to say is "Mac Users: Stop phutzing with your program
file and folder names: leavitalone and it will "just work"

Mind you, I created a hell of a fuss about the idea of storing the Microsoft
User Data in the "Documents" folder. This is a red vs blue religious
argument that has been raging without hope of resolution for some years

The forces of the Left maintain that everything in the MUD is created by the
user and is thus a "User File" and belongs in the user's "Documents".

The forces of the Right (including me...) say that the majority of users
have no idea what is in the MUD, and they did NOT create it, Microsoft
Office applications did that. And so it should be in "Application Support".

At least I got the Word templates out of there in this release. Now for the
rest of it...

No, come to think of it, I don't CARE about the rest of it: I am a Word MVP.
The rest of that horrid binary soup belongs to Entourage, and who cares if
that gets broken

OK, I will just go and sit somewhere nice and safe and watch the fun, now...

Cheers

I finally figured out what happened and fixed it ...

I had renamed my documents folder when I was "cleaning up the clutter". This
was not a problem with mapping to the MS database ... that is, until I
performed the OS X update. This forced the creation of a new documents folder
into which MS Office promptly created a new a new set of user settings and
database.

When I renamed this old documents folder back to its original, my MS stuff
came back, this is everything but the last 2 weeks of my e-mail which is the
point at which the trouble begin ... I'm supposing my ISP's server dumped
those when I was signing-on from another OS partition.

Oh well, live & learn ... thanks for ideas.

--
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
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]