Problems with Word 2008 Mac

[Roc Knowledge]

Greetings,

Just got a Macbook Pro and migrated over from a G5 with a kernel
panic. Uninstalled MS Office 2008 that was transferred over and
deleted all microsoft prefences, any and everything that said
"microsoft" or "office."
MS Word still quits on me quite often in both .doc and .docx formats.
When I restart the application and try to work on the document footer,
I receive a message that there is Insufficient Memory and that I
should save the document now.

I currently have open:

Safari
Mail
Address Book
iTune
ICal
MS Word
MS Excel
Preview

Also, every time I go to print an MS Word document (and if I have
another Word document open) the document I am printing disappears
immediately after I hit the Print button. I am also still seeing
duplicate lines on my monitor at times in MS Word Documents (which was
happening on G5 as well).

I just again deleted the com.microsoft.Word.plist
and the com.microsoft.office.plist and restarted Word. We'll see what
happens.
Any suggestions? Thanks, I appreciate it.

Roc

 

[John McGhie]

You don't mention updating. Ensure that both Mac OS X and Office 2008 are
fully up to date (you have to re-apply after a re-install) or nothing will
work right.

You have some corrupt documents in the mix. Maggie any document that gives
you the "Insufficient memory" message:

The Maggie:

1. Create a new blank document
2. Carefully select all of the text in the bad document EXCEPT the last
paragraph mark
3. Copy it.
4. Paste in the new document.
5. Save under a new file name and close all, then re-open.

This technique for de-corrupting is known as "Doing a 'Maggie'", after
Margaret Secara from the TECHWR-L mailing list, who first publicised the
technique.

The disappearing document problem is probably a bug that recently appeared:
which printer driver are you using?

The duplicate lines problem is a "feature": live with it It's a
power-saving measure which occasionally fails to redraw all of the screen.

Hope this helps

Greetings,

Just got a Macbook Pro and migrated over from a G5 with a kernel
panic. Uninstalled MS Office 2008 that was transferred over and
deleted all microsoft prefences, any and everything that said
"microsoft" or "office."
MS Word still quits on me quite often in both .doc and .docx formats.
When I restart the application and try to work on the document footer,
I receive a message that there is Insufficient Memory and that I
should save the document now.

I currently have open:

Safari
Mail
Address Book
iTune
ICal
MS Word
MS Excel
Preview

Also, every time I go to print an MS Word document (and if I have
another Word document open) the document I am printing disappears
immediately after I hit the Print button. I am also still seeing
duplicate lines on my monitor at times in MS Word Documents (which was
happening on G5 as well).

I just again deleted the com.microsoft.Word.plist
and the com.microsoft.office.plist and restarted Word. We'll see what
happens.
Any suggestions? Thanks, I appreciate it.

Roc

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Roc Knowledge]

You don't mention updating.  Ensure that both Mac OS X and Office 2008 are
fully up to date (you have to re-apply after a re-install) or nothing will
work right.

You have some corrupt documents in the mix.  Maggie any document that gives
you the "Insufficient memory" message:

The Maggie:

1. Create a new blank document
2. Carefully select all of the text in the bad document EXCEPT the last
paragraph mark
3. Copy it.
4. Paste in the new document.
5. Save under a new file name and close all, then re-open.

This technique for de-corrupting is known as "Doing a 'Maggie'", after
Margaret Secara from the TECHWR-L mailing list, who first publicised the
technique.

The disappearing document problem is probably a bug that recently appeared:
which printer driver are you using?

The duplicate lines problem is a "feature": live with it  It's a
power-saving measure which occasionally fails to redraw all of the screen..

Hope this helps









This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

 --

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

Hi John,
Thanks for your reply. Leopard on G5 to SL on new Macbook Pro. SL is
updated and so is Office to their most current versions. They were
updated before opening any files. Does this help you? Need any other
info? I have the old plist files.

Thanks for the answers to the other questions. That does help, a
lot. So this duplicate lines thing sounds documented, I just cant
find anything on it anywhere and I thought that would be one of the
things that cleared up when I got a new machine. Do a vast amount of
others experience and live with it (probably relates to how often one
uses Word)?

 

[Ray Anthony Rochester]

You don't mention updating.  Ensure that both Mac OS X and Office 2008 are
fully up to date (you have to re-apply after a re-install) or nothing will
work right.

You have some corrupt documents in the mix.  Maggie any document that gives
you the "Insufficient memory" message:

The Maggie:

1. Create a new blank document
2. Carefully select all of the text in the bad document EXCEPT the last
paragraph mark
3. Copy it.
4. Paste in the new document.
5. Save under a new file name and close all, then re-open.

This technique for de-corrupting is known as "Doing a 'Maggie'", after
Margaret Secara from the TECHWR-L mailing list, who first publicised the
technique.

The disappearing document problem is probably a bug that recently appeared:
which printer driver are you using?

The duplicate lines problem is a "feature": live with it  It's a
power-saving measure which occasionally fails to redraw all of the screen..

Hope this helps









This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

 --

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

Hi John,


Here is my printer driver:
Hewlett_Packard_HP_Color_LaserJet_3800

Driver version 16.1

Hope this helps.

Thanks again.

 

[Ray Anthony Rochester]

Hi John,
Thanks for your reply.  Leopard on G5 to SL on new Macbook Pro.  SL is
updated and so is Office to their most current versions.  They were
updated before opening any files.  Does this help you?  Need any other
info?  I have the old plist files.

Thanks for the answers to the other questions.  That does help, a
lot.  So this duplicate lines thing sounds documented, I just cant
find anything on it anywhere and I thought that would be one of the
things that cleared up when I got a new machine.  Do a vast amount of
others experience and live with it (probably relates to how often one
uses Word)?

Sorry for the multiple replies.

By "disappears," I mean goes behind another open Word document. I can
see how this might be another "feature," do you, John, think that is
what is happening?

Thank you.

 

[John McGhie]

If you're fully updated, you're good and the documents are bad: Maggie them


If you have the old PLIST files, make sure they are in the trash: PLIST
files are specific to the machine and the OS they were created for. If your
PLIST files were created on the old machine, delete them and Word will
create new ones (so long as it can't find the old ones: empty the trash).

It will work a lot better after that! However, I doubt if that's the cause
of your problem: I suspect you have corrupt documents.

The duplicate lines "feature" is not documented (except in here...). No
multi-tasking operating system application asks for the whole screen to be
redrawn if it can help it. Like all the others, Word does a partial redraw
of just the bits it thinks have changed. This saves a lot of computing
power/battery/heat/time. But occasionally, Word loses track of what has
changed and forgets to redraw a bit. That's what you're seeing. It's
sensitive to the graphics drive in use, the colour depth, the screen
resolution, etc. It's a glitch that has been around in various forms since
about 1986! Some versions of Word do it less often than others. Slower
machines are more likely to let you see it than faster ones. Longer
documents are more likely to provoke it than shorter ones. Complex
documents do it a lot more often than simple ones.

Bottom line: Nothing you can do about it: get used to it. Flip into Normal
view and back, or page back three screenfuls and come forward again to force
a redraw. Live with it...

The "go behind" problem is a bug: we're not sure whose: either Apple or
Microsoft. It seems to have appeared with the 10.6.2 update, which would
tend to point the finger at Cupertino. Either way, we don't have a fix for
it yet.

Hope this helps

Hi John,
Thanks for your reply. Leopard on G5 to SL on new Macbook Pro. SL is
updated and so is Office to their most current versions. They were
updated before opening any files. Does this help you? Need any other
info? I have the old plist files.

Thanks for the answers to the other questions. That does help, a
lot. So this duplicate lines thing sounds documented, I just cant
find anything on it anywhere and I thought that would be one of the
things that cleared up when I got a new machine. Do a vast amount of
others experience and live with it (probably relates to how often one
uses Word)?

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Jeff Chapman]

Hello John,

The duplicate lines "feature" is not documented (except in here...). No
multi-tasking operating system application asks for the whole screen to be
redrawn if it can help it. Like all the others, Word does a partial redraw
of just the bits it thinks have changed. This saves a lot of computing
power/battery/heat/time. But occasionally, Word loses track of what has
changed and forgets to redraw a bit. That's what you're seeing. It's
sensitive to the graphics drive in use, the colour depth, the screen
resolution, etc. It's a glitch that has been around in various forms since
about 1986! Some versions of Word do it less often than others. Slower
machines are more likely to let you see it than faster ones. Longer
documents are more likely to provoke it than shorter ones. Complex
documents do it a lot more often than simple ones.

Bottom line: Nothing you can do about it: get used to it. Flip into Normal
view and back, or page back three screenfuls and come forward again to force
a redraw. Live with it...

My fix for the "duplicate lines feature" is to force the screen to redraw by
doing a Command+A to select everything, and then clicking again at the point
where I left off. It seems to work more often than not. Switching the view
is also a great idea, as you mentioned. (I actually have the Command+1 thru
5 keys set to correspond to each view icon on the bottom of the Word UI, so
I can switch from Notebook Layout to Normal in a jiffy. )

Funny how MS didn't mention that ever-so-useful "feature" in their web
contents marketing Word 2008 ... I'm sure that the general public would just
go _gaga_ over an app that leaves duplicate lines hanging around the screen
without provocation every so often. ;-D

Jeff

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Jeff:

Funny how MS didn't mention that ever-so-useful "feature" in their web
contents marketing Word 2008 ... I'm sure that the general public would just
go _gaga_ over an app that leaves duplicate lines hanging around the screen
without provocation every so often. ;-D

Yair... Escapes me how they have missed this opportunity to market it as a
"Security Feature" too

In the old days, they used to blame the graphics drive. Which was usually
safe enough, because nVidia drives sucked big lumps and would crash the OS
if you changed your mind.

Recently, graphics drivers have been better behaved, so I am not sure what
they blame these days: probably the Thread Dispatcher...

Cheers

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]