Word looks for another server on the network

[henryn]

Folks:

Intel iMac, MacOS 10.4.8
Office 2004 fully updated

Word launches normally, and opens an empty document. I immediately choose
"Save As"... and Word tries to open a connection to another computer on the
local network: I see an alert "AFP Connection Status ... Looking up "<host
name>". There's a "cancel" button -- more about this in a moment.

Since the target machine is powered down, the connection cannot be made.
MacOS eventually gives up and puts up an alert box that says:

"Connection failed .. The server may not exist or it is not operational at
this time. Check the server name or IP address and try again."

Answering "OK" should put an end to the matter, but Word apparently tries
again and this cycle repeats for as long as I've let it go. When I get
tired of watching it, I try to hit the "cancel" button in the alert box, and
Word becomes locked, with a spinning pizza as long as I'm willing to wait,
many minutes. The only way out is a Force Quit.

If I don't try to save but look around in various menus first, I discover
that just trying to open the "Save" Preferences causes this cycle to begin
-- the contents never become visible. Work-around: if I powerup the target
server, the Save preferences become visible, but there is no reference in it
to any remote machine. Nor does the File Locations Preferences mention
anything other than the local server. All but one location is blank and the
exception is set to the current machine.

The only place I see a mention of the other machine is in the recently used
files list under the File menu. I can't see how to clear that ... even
though it shouldn't have any effect unless I choose a file on that list,
which I am not.

Oh, yes, I threw away "Normal"... No help. I tossed all MS preferences.
Didn't help.


Question 1: What is Word looking for and why?

Question 2: How do I tell Word to look on the local machine or, at least,
not to look on that particular remote machine?


Thanks,

Henry

(e-mail address removed) remove 'zzz'

 

[Elliott Roper]

Folks:

Intel iMac, MacOS 10.4.8
Office 2004 fully updated

Word launches normally, and opens an empty document. I immediately choose
"Save As"... and Word tries to open a connection to another computer on the
local network: I see an alert "AFP Connection Status ... Looking up "<host
name>". There's a "cancel" button -- more about this in a moment.

Since the target machine is powered down, the connection cannot be made.
MacOS eventually gives up and puts up an alert box that says:

"Connection failed .. The server may not exist or it is not operational at
this time. Check the server name or IP address and try again."

Answering "OK" should put an end to the matter, but Word apparently tries
again and this cycle repeats for as long as I've let it go. When I get
tired of watching it, I try to hit the "cancel" button in the alert box, and
Word becomes locked, with a spinning pizza as long as I'm willing to wait,
many minutes. The only way out is a Force Quit.

If I don't try to save but look around in various menus first, I discover
that just trying to open the "Save" Preferences causes this cycle to begin
-- the contents never become visible. Work-around: if I powerup the target
server, the Save preferences become visible, but there is no reference in it
to any remote machine. Nor does the File Locations Preferences mention
anything other than the local server. All but one location is blank and the
exception is set to the current machine.

The only place I see a mention of the other machine is in the recently used
files list under the File menu. I can't see how to clear that ... even
though it shouldn't have any effect unless I choose a file on that list,
which I am not.

Oh, yes, I threw away "Normal"... No help. I tossed all MS preferences.
Didn't help.


Question 1: What is Word looking for and why?

I *think* this is a long standing Mac annoyance, rather than Word
specific. It is looking for the most recently saved-to folder, which
is... (Oh dear!)

Question 2: How do I tell Word to look on the local machine or, at least,
not to look on that particular remote machine?

Next time that machine is up, so you can get out of the loop, create a
doc and save as.. to a local folder
(I have not tested this suggestion recently. I think OS X started
remembering different locations for open and save somewhere about 10.2)

 

[henryn]

Elliott Roper:

Thanks for your response:

I *think* this is a long standing Mac annoyance, rather than Word
specific. It is looking for the most recently saved-to folder, which
is... (Oh dear!)

That's an interesting suggestion.

Next time that machine is up, so you can get out of the loop, create a
doc and save as.. to a local folder

That is a good theory, and I appreciate the help, but this measure had no
effect. I tried it several times. After doing this, the most recently-used
folder is demonstrably on this host, not the other.

(I have not tested this suggestion recently. I think OS X started
remembering different locations for open and save somewhere about 10.2)

It appears to me that Word requests something from the other host --more
about that in a moment-- and MacOS dutifully tries make the connection.

MacOS is quite competent at dealing with connecting to network resources
that may or may not be available. When the connection cannot be made after
a certain number of attempts, MacOS tells the user and presumably informs
Word. It appears that Word refuses to take "no" for an answer, and continues
asking to be connected to the other host, over and over, indefinitely.

Word should let the OS do its job, in this case to initiate a connection to
a remote server, and assume that the OS does the job properly --
specifically, if the connection can't be made, to accept the result and
provide a fall-back. (A perfectly good one is the Documents directory of the
current user. Isn't that the one that comes up first on a new Word
installation?) Word should not keep trying to get something that is not
available.

Now a bit more about the nature of the request... Even after saving
documents to multiple places on the current server according to your
suggestion, I note that Word seems quite confused about a "default"
location.

(I'm omitting a lot of details here, describing how I booted up and shut
down the remote server numerous times, ran various experiments with Word...
I'll be glad to supply these details if you want them.)


Following your example, I decided to find an existing email on the local
machine with a .doc attachment. Opening that should reset the default to
the current host, right? For good measure, I quit Word after seeing the
attachment open, and launched it again. No effect. I tried again, this
time saving the opened attachment to my home directory, again on the local
machine. Quit and re-launched. Word still insists on defaulting Open to the
remote host.

Another theory: maybe Word is remembering that last folder from which a
file was recently opened, rather than to which a file was most recently
saved. Test this by diving into an existing directory on the local
machine, finding a valid file, and opening it. Then exiting Word and
re-launching. Aha, that seems to do it.

Now, can I operate with the remote server powered down? Quit Word, take
down the remote server, re-launch Word... Nope, Word still is stuck in an
endless loop looking for the remote server.

One final check of preferences-->File Locations. Some are unspecified. None
mention the remote server.

I'm out of ideas.

Thanks,

Henry

 

[Elliott Roper]

Elliott Roper:

Thanks for your response:

That's an interesting suggestion.


That is a good theory, and I appreciate the help, but this measure had no
effect. I tried it several times. After doing this, the most recently-used
folder is demonstrably on this host, not the other.

Actually it was a crap theory. I should have tested it first. I did so
just now, and with the 'other' machine not mounted, Word saves to the
local document folder here.

It appears to me that Word requests something from the other host --more
about that in a moment-- and MacOS dutifully tries make the connection.

MacOS is quite competent at dealing with connecting to network resources
that may or may not be available. When the connection cannot be made after
a certain number of attempts, MacOS tells the user and presumably informs
Word. It appears that Word refuses to take "no" for an answer, and continues
asking to be connected to the other host, over and over, indefinitely.

Yeah well, for small values of competent. Don't you just love the way
Finder hangs about waiting for your .mac iDisk when you could not care
less about it, and all you did was try to scroll down past the little
sniveller?

Word should let the OS do its job, in this case to initiate a connection to
a remote server, and assume that the OS does the job properly --
specifically, if the connection can't be made, to accept the result and
provide a fall-back. (A perfectly good one is the Documents directory of the
current user. Isn't that the one that comes up first on a new Word
installation?) Word should not keep trying to get something that is not
available.

Yep. I agree, and on my testing just now, it fell back to ~/Documents
when it couldn't see the remote machine.

However, it was not completely perfect. Items on the recently used list
that referred to docs on the external machine returned "this document
template does not exist" if I dismounted and remounted the external
file system while Word was running. First of all they were ordinary
documents, and not templates, and secondly, since Word was smart enough
to list them when the external machine re-appeared, it should have been
smart enough to open them.

I was semi-pleased that Word did not display external docs in the
recently used list if the external machine was not mounted. I would
have been more happy if they remained but greyed out.

Now a bit more about the nature of the request... Even after saving
documents to multiple places on the current server according to your
suggestion, I note that Word seems quite confused about a "default"
location.

(I'm omitting a lot of details here, describing how I booted up and shut
down the remote server numerous times, ran various experiments with Word...
I'll be glad to supply these details if you want them.)


Following your example, I decided to find an existing email on the local
machine with a .doc attachment. Opening that should reset the default to
the current host, right? For good measure, I quit Word after seeing the
attachment open, and launched it again. No effect. I tried again, this
time saving the opened attachment to my home directory, again on the local
machine. Quit and re-launched. Word still insists on defaulting Open to the
remote host.

I was really referring to the current default for save rather than for
open. Perhaps I misread your problem statement?

Another theory: maybe Word is remembering that last folder from which a
file was recently opened, rather than to which a file was most recently
saved. Test this by diving into an existing directory on the local
machine, finding a valid file, and opening it. Then exiting Word and
re-launching. Aha, that seems to do it.

Try a save-as before exiting Word. I'm no longer confident that it will
help, but that should encourage Word to remember the local save
location with greater fondness.

Now, can I operate with the remote server powered down? Quit Word, take
down the remote server, re-launch Word... Nope, Word still is stuck in an
endless loop looking for the remote server.

One final check of preferences-->File Locations. Some are unspecified. None
mention the remote server.

So am I. I'll keep niggling at it. I have seen something similar in
other applications in the past, but I now forget how or even /if/ I
resolved it.

 

[rwargo]

I've experienced a similar problem which was the result of an alias to
an offline folder; specifically, it was the Pictures folder that I had
aliased to a network folder. Removing the alias or renaming the
Pictures alias removed the AFP Connection Status dialog. I've blogged
about this problem and solution on my blog (http://www.rickwargo.com).
The entry is at:
http://www.rickwargo.com/2006/12/08/afp-connection-status-and-various-os-x-applications-locking-up/

All the best,
Rick Wargo

 

[henryn]

Rick Wargo:

Thanks for your response:

I've experienced a similar problem which was the result of an alias to
an offline folder; specifically, it was the Pictures folder that I had
aliased to a network folder. Removing the alias or renaming the
Pictures alias removed the AFP Connection Status dialog. I've blogged
about this problem and solution on my blog (http://www.rickwargo.com).
The entry is at:
http://www.rickwargo.com/2006/12/08/afp-connection-status-and-various-os-x-app
lications-locking-up/

I updated the thread most recently saying that I had begun to setup a
testing situation to explore the problem -- and it abruptly stopped
happening for reasons I cannot fathom. I made no changes that I can imagine
would make a difference.

Since you bring it up, there are several points worth clarifying:

o You say in your blog that you saw this with multiple apps. Which ones?
Other Office apps? Any pattern to what kind of apps have the problem and
ones that don't? (I didn't see my issue with any other app.)

o Do you have any idea _why_ these apps want a valid "Pictures" folder? Do
you use the Pictures folder routinely? (I use that folder almost never,
and I use the other machine _only_ as a backup -- I do not serve any
material from it to other machines.)

O Can you reproduce the error at any time by substituting an alias to
another machine? Can you get a similar error for "Movies" or "Music" or
"Sites"?

O Do the apps looking for the remote machine give up once you tell the
system to cancel the attempt to connect? Your block says "Locking up" but
your post here doesn't go so far. (In my case, Word always asked again,
indefinitely, making it unusable.)

Of the folders in one's home directory, I can see that "Library" and
"Desktop" are common-sensically mandatory -- I would expect a problem if
"Library" was not present locally or remotely, but I would also expect apps
to fail gracefully. As for the other folders, I don't see a reason for
any application not specifically tied to a particular folder (as iPhoto
_might_ be to "Pictures") to require the presence of that folder -- and even
so, each should fail gracefully if it doesn't find the folder.

I cannot imagine why Word insists on finding ~Pictures (that is, the
Pictures folder in my home directory).

Trying... I renamed ~Pictures and launched Word... Nope, Word doesn't seem
to care; File->Open works normally. iPhoto fails... Perfectly, by telling
me it can't find the folder and offering several alternatives.

Thinking out loud, I guess I can imagine some kind of caching scheme in
MacOS that would account for this behavior. MacOS could be trying to
re-establish your previous work environment based on the previous session
with a particular app. In the case of "Pictures" MacOS might be
anticipating that, since last session with a particular app you accessed the
remote volume, you'll want to do it again. Maybe this is done to smooth
out variations in system configuration.

But that's not my use pattern. I just got a new machine. I carefully
copied everything over from the old one -- and everything worked fine, my
old environment was re-created except for some minor issues. At that moment
the old machine became a backup system and I kept it turned off most of the
time. I never knowingly opened a document in any application on the old
machine from the new one. I suppose it could have happened...

Thanks,

Henry

(e-mail address removed) remove 'zzz'

 

[henryn]

Elliot Roper:

Thanks for your response on this thread:

http://www.rickwargo.com/2006/12/08/afp-connection-status-and-various-os-x-ap>>
p

Yes!! That's what happened to me too. Alias problems.
Its something that goes back to OS9. I had a fax application in that
state for ages till I found the file that was really an alias. It was
on a recently used list or something else innocuous.

I've posted a response to Rick Wango, asking for some details. It's
possible his experience and mine are the same... or not.

It might be worth Henry's time to potter about in the Finder looking
for little curvy arrows on the icons of files that Word might be
interested in.

That's the first thing I did. And the second, and the third.

If Word is interested in obtaining a resource, the identity of the resource
ought to be in evidence, somehow, somewhere. Without a treasure hunt by
the user, who --after all-- is presumably interested in doing some writing.

Here's a good place: In the dialog that comes up after the request fails.
May I suggest some text? "Word can't continue without being able to find
<resource>. Make this available and choose 'continue' or click 'exit' to
leave Word.

"Force Quit" was the only alternative. Doing that risks damage to whatever
Word might have in-process at the time -- hopefully nothing just after
launching, but one never knows.

Henry, I agree with your assertion that it shouldn't happen, but it is
probably out of Microsoft's hands to a large degree.
Thanks!

When Word asks OS X to do something with a file, it has to wait politely till
it is done. Remember OS X is a flavour of BSD unix, where I/O operations are
depressingly uniformly synchronous [1].

I'll address this further below.

If you ask for something, your
thread is dead till it happens. Of course Word's designers could have
developed a complex multithreaded jacket around file operations, and
added their own timeouts, but honestly, it would have been a nightmare
that would break on every second OS revision. There are many things on
my wish list for Word, but *that* is not one of them.

Word is clearly stuck at a point at which it wants a resource that is not
available. That is a perfectly valid point to block. And it is exactly
right that Word needs to leave such details to the operating system.

The alias could be simply to a file of your own that is in some
recently used list or list of templates or even a font. I wouldn't get
too hung up on ~/Pictures or ~/Library just yet.

So we have suspicions about what Word did NOT want... Any more clues about
where one might look to find what it did want?

There is one thing that might be in Word's backyard. That is the
looping behaviour you see. It would be very useful if you could make a
simple demonstration of this that others could replicate. The MVPs
among us will send it on to the developers to examine. (Or you could
use the send feedback menu item)

Certainly, I would, if the behavior had continued. As I posted some days
ago, I was in the process of clearing the decks to examine the issue from
several angles --including, thank you very much for reminding me, lsof-- and
the behavior simply vanished. I did not delete any aliases, as far as I
know. The behavior had already survived a system shutdown and quite a few
standard Word problem-solving techniques Closing irrelevant applications
should have had no effect. But... that's what happened.

Since the problem has disappeared, this might seem academic, but it seems
that similar issues have come up before, and it seems worthwhile to figure
out other places one might look to figure out what Word is seeking in these
kinds of situations.

1. I'm being unkind to unix possibly. Even my beloved VMS, with all its
lovely QIOs and ASTs, is pretty synchronous across a file lookup.
Finding a file is actually quite an intricate operation, involving lots
of separate I/O operations, and often a delicate dance with locks and
mutexes, which in turn bring on timers with retries and lots of process
switching inside the OS. Aliases make it far worse, not least when the
physical file, or another in the chain of aliases is on a different
volume.

How any OS satisfies an application request for a file --or any other system
resource-- is entirely independent of the application. How an application
deals with the non-availability of the requested resource is entirely the
responsibility of the application. That's fundamental to the distinction
between "application" and "operating system". As far as I can determine,
the OS did exactly what it should -- it tried to get something requested by
Word. When the item was unavailable, the OS reported to the user what
happened and, reported the status back to Word, which blindly repeated the
request without offering any reasonable alternatives to the user.

Thanks,

Henry

 

[Elliott Roper]

Elliot Roper:

Thanks for your response on this thread:

How any OS satisfies an application request for a file --or any other system
resource-- is entirely independent of the application. How an application
deals with the non-availability of the requested resource is entirely the
responsibility of the application. That's fundamental to the distinction
between "application" and "operating system". As far as I can determine,
the OS did exactly what it should -- it tried to get something requested by
Word. When the item was unavailable, the OS reported to the user what
happened and, reported the status back to Word, which blindly repeated the
request without offering any reasonable alternatives to the user.

It would be very useful, if this over comes up again, if you could post
details of how it happened. Getting solid evidence in front of the
maintainers is the most important part us users can play in getting it
fixed. We can't at this stage determine whether Word is being silly or
OS X is lying to it. I know where my money would be, but I *was* wrong
last time.

In your recent experience, the best we can say is that something out of
the ordinary happened when you transferred your work from one machine
to another. Since you are fairly confident that aliases were not
involved, I'd look again at your user ID's on your admin and work
accounts. Are they the same on both machines? (type "id") at the
terminal on each machine. My unix knowledge is small, so I don't know
how to change one of them if they differ, but I'm pretty sure that file
ownership rules are evaluated on the numeric ID and not the name.

Perhaps something broke, due to permissions, in the chain between some
file Word wanted (maybe some of your own work or settings, or maybe one
of the libraries it uses) and where the file really was? I'm out of my
depth here. It is just a wild guess. Did you do a fresh out of the box
installation of Office on your new machine, or did you use Apple's
migration assistant?

 

[henryn]

Elliot Roper:

Thank you for your response on this thread:

It would be very useful, if this over comes up again, if you could post
details of how it happened. Getting solid evidence in front of the
maintainers is the most important part us users can play in getting it
fixed. We can't at this stage determine whether Word is being silly or
OS X is lying to it. I know where my money would be, but I *was* wrong
last time.

Yes, if I see this issue again, I will certainly post about it. I'm not
sure what I can do differently to document the issue. Screen shots of the
alerts instead of text quotes? I listed all the troubleshooting techniques
I applied -- no surprises, they're all well-known. I am certainly open to
learning new ways to document what I observe.

You can pass this message to "the maintainers": Please examine places where
the Word code attempts to get a resource from or through the OS, and check
for the possibility of an endless loop if "not available" or the equivalent
is returned. If such a loop is possible, please make sure that Word informs
the user about the identity --or at least the general nature-- of the item
sought and offers the user a choice to continue --in which case the user may
try to correct the problem on the spot-- or to exit Word in an orderly
fashion.

In your recent experience, the best we can say is that something out of
the ordinary happened when you transferred your work from one machine
to another. Since you are fairly confident that aliases were not
involved, I'd look again at your user ID's on your admin and work
accounts. Are they the same on both machines? (type "id") at the
terminal on each machine. My unix knowledge is small, so I don't know
how to change one of them if they differ, but I'm pretty sure that file
ownership rules are evaluated on the numeric ID and not the name.

Yes, the id's are the same.

Perhaps something broke, due to permissions, in the chain between some
file Word wanted (maybe some of your own work or settings, or maybe one
of the libraries it uses) and where the file really was? I'm out of my
depth here. It is just a wild guess. Did you do a fresh out of the box
installation of Office on your new machine, or did you use Apple's
migration assistant?

Let me speculate about your permissions theory: I can imagine a resource on
the new machine being unavailable because of a "bad" permissions setting,
and so Word sought that resource in the next best place -- the last place it
was successfully found. It still should be possible to find out what Word
was seeking.

About moving an installation, there's a very clear model describing where
application "state" is stored-- in the home directory basis of the current
user-- and it works very well. (There would be chaos if it didn't!) It
seems reasonable to have Office state stored both in both ~/Documents (The
MUD) and ~/Library/Preferences, and I'm quite capable of making sure these
are properly transferred, as proven by the seamless transfer of my complex
Entourage installation and data.

Thanks,

Henry

 

[Peter Barber]

I've experienced a similar problem which was the result of an alias to
an offline folder; specifically, it was the Pictures folder that I had
aliased to a network folder. Removing the alias or renaming the
Pictures alias removed the AFP Connection Status dialog. I've blogged
about this problem and solution on my blog (http://www.rickwargo.com).
The entry is at:
http://www.rickwargo.com/2006/12/08/afp-connection-status-and-various-os-x-applications-locking-up/

All the best,
Rick Wargo

Hello - just a quick intrusion into the Microsoft NGs to say thanks to
Rick. I was tearing my hair out with just this problem on my wife's
brand-new MacBook, which was proving well-nigh unusable.

Your comment reminded me that I had aliased ~/Documents/Microsoft User
Data to a subfolder of ~/Library some time ago on our PB and Mac mini,
to prevent Synchronize Plus X trying to sync Entourage data between the
two (which of course would fail, since the data files would be updated
every time Entourage was used on either computer).

Of course, I used the Migration Assistant to bring all my wife's stuff
over from the old computer - including that alias. Interestingly, even
though both alias and original were still in the right places on the
new MacBook, clicking that alias produced the behaviour described by
the OP.

So I have deleted that apparently broken alias, and set it up again,
and bingo! No beachballs!

Phew...