Buggish behaviour with Word.

[macdenno]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
Processor: intel

Some problems with Word in Mac:Office 2008 (Home & Student Edition), which persist after the recent update.

I'm floating them here in case someone has a solution, otherwise I'll flick it all on to MS 'product feedback'.

1 Grouping creates lines around all grouped objects.

When I'm working with a scanned diagram (format > square) I'll put a line around the diagram to give it an edge. Then I'll put a text box or two over the diagram and select 'no line' on the boxes. When I 'group' them, all the grouped objects subsequently appear with a line around each individual item. Not good.

2 Grouping changes formatting.

This one has been around since Office vX. When I insert a picture or object, I'll format it as 'square'. When the picture is grouped with an object (also formatted 'square'), the formatting changes to 'tight' or sometimes to 'in front of text', or whatever. It would be nice if they just stayed 'square'.

3 Deleting section break reformats entire document.

I work with long documents based upon a template where the initial pages are set up as ‘Portrait’ and the latter pages set up as ‘Landscape’. If I delete the section break that leads in to the ‘Landscape’ section, the entire document changes to ‘Landscape’.

4 ‘Undo’ puts cursor at start of document.

This is tricky to explain. When working with an image that has, say, an arrow drawn over it and then select the arrow to move it, sometimes the image will be selected and move instead. No problem, just hit ‘Command – Z’ to undo the move. Problem is, doing that will often cause the cursor to jump back to the start of the document. When you’re working on page 25 or 30 of the document, that’s annoying.

5 Laboring with Tables

Tables that extend over two or more pages have always been a problem for Word. Writing in individual cells often slows to a crawl, with the appearance of the letters lagging well behind the typing. Copy/paste between cells will often lose formatting, for example, words in italic 10-point will come out plain 12-point when pasted. Copy/paste between cells can sometimes be extraordinarily slow and bring up the SBBoD (Spinning Beach Ball of Death).

6 Compatibility problems between Intel version and PPC version.

I’ve got one copy of Office:Mac on my PPC Quicksilver G4 933MHz desktop machine (1 GB RAM), and another copy on my MacBook Pro with the Intel 2.2GHz chip (4 GB RAM). Both machines are running OS 10.4.11.

All of the following problems occur when documents are created on the MacBook Pro and are then transferred to the Quicksilver.

6A ‘Small caps’ does not always translate correctly.

When I’m writing a letter on the MacBook Pro, the subject line ‘Re: Whatever’ is formatted in ‘Small Caps’ with the initial letter of each word in caps, and the entire line Bold and Underlined. When opened on the Quicksilver, the initial letters come out differently, for example, a word that has ‘A’ as its first letter will have ‘P’ instead. Deleting the erroneous letter and re-typing doesn’t work. Placing the cursor between the first and second letter, typing in the correct letter and then deleting the erroneous letter works.

6B Word does not always print photographs.

Press Command – P to bring up the Print dialogue box, set the print range to those pages with photographs only, and the pages print out with header/footer, text, but no photographs. Print the entire document instead and only then are the photographs printed.

6C Word does not always ‘recognise’ photographs.

Delete a photograph from the document, and then insert the same photograph and an alert will pop up stating that the photograph is in an unsupported graphic format or may be damaged.

7 Auto-correct.
Hopefully this one will be easily solved. I often have to write about trees, giving their common name and scientific name. I’ve set up auto-correct so that when I type something like euc reg it will expand to read as Mountain Ash Eucalyptus regnans

 

[macdenno]

the above was truncated by the system. Here's the rest:

7 Auto-correct.
Hopefully this one will be easily solved. I often have to write about trees, giving their common name and scientific name. I've set up auto-correct so that when I type something like euc reg it will expand to read as Mountain Ash Eucalyptus regnans. I need the first two words to be plain text, and the last two words to be in italics. For whatever reason the 'replace with formatted text' option is greyed out in the auto-correct set up box.

8 Dictionary/Language
Setting the language to 'English (AUS)' on the Quicksilver just doesn't work. The spell-check flags words like 'greyed' and 'optimise' and so forth. Rune the spell-checker and the top reads 'Spelling: English (US).

 

[John McGhie]

If you're going to make me work this hard, it would be so nice if you added
your name. Talking to a machine is not much fun...

1 Grouping creates lines around all grouped objects.

That's a bug.

2 Grouping changes formatting.

That's a bug. Microsoft's term is that it changes "wrapping".

3 Deleting section break reformats entire document.

I work with long documents based upon a template where the initial pages are
set up as ŒPortrait¹ and the latter pages set up as ŒLandscape¹. If I delete
the section break that leads in to the ŒLandscape¹ section, the entire
document changes to ŒLandscape¹.

That's "working as designed". A section break controls the page layout of
the text that precedes it.

If you delete a section break, the properties of the section break that is
below it in the document are applied to the text above your deletion.

The entire document is controlled by the Master Section Break, which is
stored in the file below the very last paragraph mark in the document.
Because the master section break is outside the text area, it is never
displayed. It cannot be deleted.

Now that you know this, you will never be bitten by this again This
also applies to Paragraph Marks. Generically, the terminating character of
a text string contains the formatting applied to that text string.

4 ŒUndo¹ puts cursor at start of document.

This is tricky to explain. When working with an image that has, say, an arrow
drawn over it and then select the arrow to move it, sometimes the image will
be selected and move instead. No problem, just hit ŒCommand ­ Z¹ to undo the
move. Problem is, doing that will often cause the cursor to jump back to the
start of the document. When you¹re working on page 25 or 30 of the document,
that¹s annoying.

That's both a bug and working by design The cursor is moving back to
the "anchor" of the picture. Read up on Anchors in the Help, particularly
the bit about how to display them. If you move the anchor to the correct
paragraph, the cursor will move to the front of that paragraph.

It's a buggy design

5 Laboring with Tables

Tables that extend over two or more pages have always been a problem for Word.

They have?? I have run them up to about 160 pages without a problem.

Writing in individual cells often slows to a crawl, with the appearance of the
letters lagging well behind the typing. Copy/paste between cells will often
lose formatting, for example, words in italic 10-point will come out plain
12-point when pasted. Copy/paste between cells can sometimes be
extraordinarily slow and bring up the SBBoD (Spinning Beach Ball of Death).

You have some corruption happening in that document. Tables are "fragile",
there are certain editing moves you are best not to do in a table.
Drag-and-drop is one of them.

If you can, convert that table to text, then convert it back to a table
again. That will completely clean it out and it will be a lot faster.

That said, I am convinced that there is a BUG in Word 2008 that slows down
some tables for some users on some machines. So far, we do not have a solid
description of how to reproduce this problem that we can send to Microsoft.
Until we get that, they won't be able to fix it. I have never seen it on
this machine (Intel, 2GB, OS 10.4.11)

6A ŒSmall caps¹ does not always translate correctly.

Yes, known bug. They're working on it.

6B Word does not always print photographs.

Can be "working as designed". To print the photographs, the paragraph
containing the anchor of the picture must be included in the selection.

6C Word does not always Œrecognise¹ photographs.

That's a bug. Save and close the document (to cause Word to remove the
deleted one from the file) then re-open and re-insert, and you should not
get the problem.

Word doesn't remove deleted information from the file until you close it.
So it thinks the photo is in there twice, and gets terribly confused

More...

--
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]

 

[John McGhie]

the above was truncated by the system. Here's the rest:

7 Auto-correct.
Hopefully this one will be easily solved. I often have to write about trees,
giving their common name and scientific name. I've set up auto-correct so that
when I type something like euc reg it will expand to read as Mountain Ash
Eucalyptus regnans. I need the first two words to be plain text, and the last
two words to be in italics. For whatever reason the 'replace with formatted
text' option is greyed out in the auto-correct set up box.

This is "working as designed". You must type the text in the text, then
format it, then select the formatted version. Then the 'replace with
formatted text' option should be enabled.

Come back if it is not: then it's a bug

8 Dictionary/Language
Setting the language to 'English (AUS)' on the Quicksilver just doesn't work.
The spell-check flags words like 'greyed' and 'optimise' and so forth. Rune
the spell-checker and the top reads 'Spelling: English (US).

Yeah, we have some major bugs in the spelling checker currently.
Particularly, working in languages other than English US.

There is also a design bug in Word: The character before the default
paragraph in a blank document is set to "Language 0" which happens to be
English US. If you do not correct that, English US "follows" the insertion
of text in the document, overriding the language set by the styles.

You can try to slow it down a bit:

1) Go to System Preferences>International and make sure your system is
correctly set to English AUS. Word picks up its initial language from the
system at startup.

2) Close all other documents

3) Open the Normal.dotm template using File>Open.

4) Select the blank paragraph

5) Use Tools>Language to set the language to English Oz

6) Use Format>Style to set the Language of Normal Style to English Oz.

7) Save the template and immediately quit Word (to ensure that your changes
are saved back).

Now, the language will be wrong only when you paste text in from somewhere
else

Hope this helps

--
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]

 

[CyberTaz]

Another perspective on a few points

If you're going to make me work this hard, it would be so nice if you added
your name. Talking to a machine is not much fun...



That's a bug.

I [respectfully] disagree...

The only time I see this happen is if the border is applied *after* the
objects are Grouped. Grouping does not combine or merge the objects as a
single object. Any formatting change you make to a Grouped object will apply
to all objects in the group which can be affected by the change. That
includes not only line changes but also fills, shadows, size, etc. Each item
in the group should be formatted as appropriate *before* the finished
objects are grouped. Grouping merely "connects" the pieces to prevent their
relative positioning to one another from being accidentally disturbed.

That's a bug. Microsoft's term is that it changes "wrapping".

Perhaps, but...

First, if you intend to Group objects it's pointless for any of the
individual objects in the group to carry their own Wrapping style - it
doesn't make a bit of difference and they can't all be in effect
simultaneously. Group the objects then apply whatever Wrapping Style you
want to the Grouped object.

Also, this happens because you have Word> Preferences> Edit - Insert/Paste
Pictures As: set to In Line with Text. If you change the default to some
form of wrapping you'll find that the "problem" goes away

That's "working as designed". A section break controls the page layout of
the text that precedes it.

If you delete a section break, the properties of the section break that is
below it in the document are applied to the text above your deletion.

The entire document is controlled by the Master Section Break, which is
stored in the file below the very last paragraph mark in the document.
Because the master section break is outside the text area, it is never
displayed. It cannot be deleted.

Now that you know this, you will never be bitten by this again This
also applies to Paragraph Marks. Generically, the terminating character of
a text string contains the formatting applied to that text string.

No doubt

That's both a bug and working by design The cursor is moving back to
the "anchor" of the picture. Read up on Anchors in the Help, particularly
the bit about how to display them. If you move the anchor to the correct
paragraph, the cursor will move to the front of that paragraph.

It's a buggy design

No, John, this is a *bug* but not what you think. The insertion point
doesn't actually move because the graphic is still selected. Note that the
OP isn't *deleting* the graphic, just undoing the move. What happens is that
the top of the document jumps to the viewing area regardless of where the
graphic is or what para it's anchored to.

They have?? I have run them up to about 160 pages without a problem.

Yeah, there must be something more to the OP's table issues

You have some corruption happening in that document. Tables are "fragile",
there are certain editing moves you are best not to do in a table.
Drag-and-drop is one of them.

If you can, convert that table to text, then convert it back to a table
again. That will completely clean it out and it will be a lot faster.

That said, I am convinced that there is a BUG in Word 2008 that slows down
some tables for some users on some machines. So far, we do not have a solid
description of how to reproduce this problem that we can send to Microsoft.
Until we get that, they won't be able to fix it. I have never seen it on
this machine (Intel, 2GB, OS 10.4.11)


Yes, known bug. They're working on it.


Can be "working as designed". To print the photographs, the paragraph
containing the anchor of the picture must be included in the selection.


That's a bug. Save and close the document (to cause Word to remove the
deleted one from the file) then re-open and re-insert, and you should not
get the problem.

Word doesn't remove deleted information from the file until you close it.
So it thinks the photo is in there twice, and gets terribly confused

More...

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[CyberTaz]

Based on your first few issues you might be interested in:

http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnigraffle/


Although if you're running Tiger you'd need version 4.x which is available
here:

http://www.omnigroup.com/ftp/pub/software/MacOSX/10.4/

 

[macdenno]

John and Bob, my thanks to you both for taking the time and effort to respond, particularly so given the season.

"If you're going to make me work this hard, it would be so nice if you added your name."

Sorry John. My name is Dennis Marsden and I too live in Sydney. I'll have to send you a virtual beer for all your hard work. Not, not a V.B., how about a virtual James Squire's? ;-)

Okay, I've taken both your advice, tried a few things, and here's the results:

1 Grouping creates lines…

Sorry Bob, this may have something to do with the sequence in which the objects are selected. I've now found that if I select the bordered object before the un-bordered objects, they'll all come out as bordered. Select the un-bordered object first, and they all come out un-bordered. I'll run with John on this one.

2 Wrapping… Thanks Bob, changing the preference fixed it.

3 Section breaks. Noted. Thanks guys.

4 Undo moves cursor

John – I'll read up on anchors. Bob – your interpretation matches mine.

5 Tables.

Wish I knew… I thought it might have been because the table in the template was created in Excel and then imported into Word. I’ve deleted the template, created a new one solely with Word, but the slowness persists. Yes, some corruption somewhere. It will have to remain a mystery.

6A Small caps. Noted.

6B Printing Photographs.
Noted, although this wasn’t a problem in Word vX. Note that this only happens with documents created on the MacBook Pro and later edited on the Quicksilver. Printing works fine with the MacBook Pro.

6C Recognising Photogaphs. Tried suggestion, but problem persists. This only happens with documents created on the MacBook Pro and later edited on the Quicksilver.

7 Auto-correct. Brilliant, John. Thanks, now working as expected.

8 Dictionary/Language. Fixed.

There were two Custom Dictionaries, one in ~Library\Preferences and another in ~Library\Preferences\Microsoft. I think the first one was from Office vX. I deleted the first one, re-set the pathway to the second Custom Dictionary in Word 2008, and the language now ‘sticks’. This problem existed on the Quicksilver but not on the MacBook Pro.

Thanks again, guys. You’re champions.

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Dennis -

I guess I must be the one person in the world who doesn't have this "bug" -
on either of my two installations One is a G5 tower with 10.4.11 the
other an Intel MBP running 10.5.0, both installed from completely different
Office 2008 disks - not even the same edition - with the 12.0.1 update.

I've tried using GIFs, TIFs, ClipArt, etc. as the bordered object & creating
text boxes which sit completely within, partially overlap or are completely
outside the main object. I've used different colors, various line weights as
well as formatting the text box with No Line & several line style/color
combinations of its own. Have even tried in a .doc (Compatibility Mode)
rather than working in a .docx just as a barometer [Word 2004 *does* have
this problem, I'll take your word on X]. I've selected one first - then
the other and everything else I can think of to force the behavior.

Net result confirms everything I said - Nothing I've done has caused the
text box to inherit the other object's border when grouped. Nor is the text
box altered in any other way. It's only if I apply or modify the border
*after* grouping that the text box picks up the attribute.

Why you're having it happen I can't begin to explain. If I come up with any
additional thoughts I'll be certain to post back.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Dennis:

See? Much nicer A hard earned thirst deserves a .... Make mine a VB
None of that poncy Eastern Suburbs weasel piss here, even if I do live
in Bondi Junction I WORK in Nhulunbuy in the Northern Territory, where
men are men and sheep are distinctly nervous...

5 Tables.

Wish I knewŠ I thought it might have been because the table in the template
was created in Excel and then imported into Word. I¹ve deleted the template,
created a new one solely with Word, but the slowness persists. Yes, some
corruption somewhere. It will have to remain a mystery.

Nah! Tables slow down for two reasons: they're 'Corrupt', or they're
"complex". If you have less than 2 GB of RAM, big complex tables are
"going" to be slow.

If you are adequately endowed, so to speak, then the slowness deserves
investigation.

There are a couple of options it is worth turning OFF because apart from
stuffing up your layout, they make the computer work a lot harder than it
needs to. One is Wandering Tables, the other is Squeezy Tables.

Both are bugs introduced to gain the attention of the easily impressed

Click in the Table and look in Table>Properties. Make sure that Text
Wrapping is set to "None" to disable Wandering Tables. This sets the table
in line with the text and prevents it wandering around the page like a
floating graphic.

Now click the Options button on that dialog and disable "Automatically
resize to fit contents." That one REALLY sucks the juice out of the CPU.
It causes Word to dynamically resize the size of each cell. If your table
contains nested tables, you will live in a symphony of struggling CPU fans

8 Dictionary/Language. Fixed.

There were two Custom Dictionaries, one in ~Library\Preferences and another in
~Library\Preferences\Microsoft. I think the first one was from Office vX. I
deleted the first one, re-set the pathway to the second Custom Dictionary in
Word 2008, and the language now Œsticks¹. This problem existed on the
Quicksilver but not on the MacBook Pro.

Hmmm... Word is designed to have up to 255 Custom Dictionaries, so this
should not have made any difference. But you may have just given us a
work-around for the very annoying "Language Won't Stick" bug that we have
been chasing in here for a month or so.

Have a VB

Cheers

--
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]

 

[macdenno]

(Marking as solved)

D