Words crashes; updates won't install; I'm confused.

[Ian Hurd]

I am new to Mac and have a series of (interrelated?) problems that I
can't figure out.

The original problem is that Word for Mac crashes while in use, with
the message "The application has unexpectedly quit." This happens
about twice per day while typing with no apparent correlation to any
particular action on my part. (It doesn't happen on startup, as some
others in this forum have had recently.)

While thinking about what's going wrong, I decided to try upgrading
both MS Office (from 10.1.1 I think) and Mac OS X (10.2.6 I think) and
downloaded newer versions from the websites. Both these upgrades
failed to install properly. They downloaded fine but when unpacking
them I got fatal errors in the process ("install cannot be completed
due to error..." or something like that). They seemed to be working
in that at least one of the many components of each installed and the
failures came later in the process. I have loads of disk space so I
don't think it's anything as obvious as a full hard drive.

Then I looked at other posts to this forum and had a look at
mcgimpsey.com website and followed the advice there about 'repairing
permissions.' I'm new to Mac so don't really understand what this
means but it looked good so I tried it (downloading the program,
because I couldn't find the application on my computer). That
download worked and the program installed but it crashed when I tried
to run it.

So, I wonder if I am missing something obvious b/c I'm not familiar
with Mac. Is there some common underlying condition that is causing
more than one of these problems?

Any suggestions would be most appreciated.

Thanks,
Ian.

 

[Guest]

When I look at your issue it seems to me the installation
is corrupt (Office). I would advise you to uninstall
Office using the Uninstall tool from your Installation cd.

Office X CD > Value pack > Remove Office folder > and
double-click on the remove office tool.

Make sure you remove all the application you find on your
computer i.e Office 98, Office 2001 and Office X including
fonts and extensions and libraries.

After the uninstall, restart your computer and empty the
trash then Re-install.

Good luck.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word]]

Thanks for posting an answer. It is really great to see someone
understanding that this is what we expect around here

These community groups are actually supposed to be for everyone to join in:
you take what you need, and you leave what you can. So it's really great to
see you supporting us like this.

Please allow me to make some suggestions that will help us get the greatest
benefit from people's efforts here:

1) Please always use the Reply To command

2) Please fill in your Name

Unless you reply To the post you are answering, neither the original
questioner nor the rest of us can tell which question your answer applies
to. You are actually using a Web interface to an NNTP UseNet News Group.
You can look "UseNet News Groups" on the web, and you will get a mass of
information.

In a newsgroup, the articles are called "posts". The posts are joined in
"threads" so the questioners (and us) can tell which answer belongs with
which post. This joining is done with a long number called an article ID,
which is generated behind the scenes by the web interface. But only if you
use the Reply To command If you don't, we have no idea.

When you do reply, you should attempt to ensure that the Subject line of the
article is not changed at all (even if it does have a spelling mistake in
it). That's because if you change the Subject, the news server starts a new
thread, and again, your answer is lost.

The reason for posting your name is so we know who sent the answer! This is
supposed to be a "community" where we all get to know each other as friends.
The name you use, of course, does not have to be your real name: but most of
us who have been here a year or two get around to using our real names
eventually. I can't speak for anyone else, but I am happy enough for you to
know who I really am.

We used to encourage people to post their real email addresses too: but the
virus weenies ruined that. There are still people out there running
computers that have no firewall or antivirus software. (Quite a few of them
in the Macintosh community, actually...). These computers eventually get
infected, and several of the viruses they get infected with "harvest" email
addresses from newsgroups, particularly these ones. So if you put your real
email address up here (as I do...) you have to have good antivirus and
antispam filtering. And I have: I need it because the virus weenies send me
something like a thousand viruses a day. Or at least, the last time I
looked they did: I haven't seen one for months -- the system drops the
straight in the trash for me.

So if you feel like putting your real email address up here so that people
can contact you, just ensure that your antivirus and Spam filter can deal
with around a thousand hits a day (that sort of volume is not really
practical if you are on dialup).

Or you can use a fake email address that any human can easily decode if they
need to contact you.

Thanks for being here!

This responds to article <[email protected]>, from
"(e-mail address removed)" <[email protected]>

When I look at your issue it seems to me the installation
is corrupt (Office). I would advise you to uninstall
Office using the Uninstall tool from your Installation cd.

Office X CD > Value pack > Remove Office folder > and
double-click on the remove office tool.

Make sure you remove all the application you find on your
computer i.e Office 98, Office 2001 and Office X including
fonts and extensions and libraries.

After the uninstall, restart your computer and empty the
trash then Re-install.

Good luck.

--

Please respond only to the newsgroup to preserve the thread.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]