Identity crisis

[HAL KUSHNER]

I don¹t if you will respond to this, but for me it is a most vexing Mac
problem on my G5. I have Office 2004 for Mac installed on my G5 (OS 4.x).
I sign on as the main account user (identity). Whenever I try to use any of
the programs ( Word, Power Point, Excel, Entourage), the program will open,
but in a few seconds it will lock up and I get a Microsoft Error Reporting
message. BUT, when I sign on using my son¹s account, everything works fine.
I tried removing and re-installing the software a few times, called Apple
support, called Microsoft support and paid $35 for nothing and continue to
have this problem. Nobody has been able to solve this situation. The
original Office 2004 for Mac software disks were recently installed on a new
iMac and work perfectly. Do you have any advice or solutions? Am I missing
something?


Thanks for reading this,

Hal Kushner MD
(e-mail address removed)

 

[CyberTaz]

It sounds like there is a problem with your user account. If the other user
works fine & the software installs OK on another system, that's pretty much
a foregone conclusion As to what the problem may be, I haven't a clue. I
assume you've done all the OS X troubleshooting including Disk Utility -
Repair Disk Permissions & Repair Disk, or a similar utility such as Onyx.
Perhaps you have some sort of software or add-in installed or set as a login
item on the main user account?

It's always been recommended to me that you not work using your main
administrator account in the first place.

If you can't determine the problem with your current account, I'd try
creating a another new admin account & see how that works. If all is well,
set yourself up as another user account with admin rights & use that as your
working user account.

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

 

[Diane Ross]

I don¹t if you will respond to this, but for me it is a most vexing Mac
problem on my G5. I have Office 2004 for Mac installed on my G5 (OS 4.x). I
sign on as the main account user (identity). Whenever I try to use any of the
programs ( Word, Power Point, Excel, Entourage), the program will open, but in
a few seconds it will lock up and I get a Microsoft Error Reporting message.
BUT, when I sign on using my son¹s account, everything works fine. I tried
removing and re-installing the software a few times, called Apple support,
called Microsoft support and paid $35 for nothing and continue to have this
problem. Nobody has been able to solve this situation. The original Office
2004 for Mac software disks were recently installed on a new iMac and work
perfectly. Do you have any advice or solutions? Am I missing something?

Just to make sure....

When you say you are signing on as the main account user (Identity)., is
this in Entourage? There is no user for the other applications.

A User is a term used by the Mac OS. The terms Identity and User are often
confused. Entourage stores your data in an Identity, and the Mac OS creates
Users. The Users folder resides at the root level of the startup disk and
contains the home folders for all user accounts on the computer. Creating a
new User is often useful to troubleshoot problems in Entourage because you
can eliminate corruption and conflicts that might reside in your Home
folder.

Definition of account

Each identity can have (almost) any number of accounts. Each account is
associated with a distinct email address than can be used to send and/or
receive mail, but all mail is stored in the same database, all calendar
events are common to all the accounts, all notes & contacts are shared.

So....if you are using the same Identity with separate accounts, then the
problem is with your accounts. Delete them and recreate from scratch. Be
careful when you copy/paste info. Adding an extra space can cause problems.

If you are using separate Identities and creating new accounts does not fix
the problem, database corruption could be the cause.

Hope this helps.

--
Diane Ross, Microsoft Mac MVP
Entourage Help Page
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
The Entourage Blog lists the EHP as one of the top five Microsoft Entourage
resources.
<http://blogs.msdn.com/entourage/>