Microsoft Office Word crashes using Lion

Limited testing on my PowerBook suggests that the fix has worked. Worrying is that i) it took Microsoft over 18 months to fix this ii) the patch release refers to 'improved stability' rather than 'now stable' iii) they referred to a bug in large documents whereas I could reproduce it in a 1 page document.

Also interesting that a typical user would now rather trust a stranger's opinion in a online forum than the professional software developers, testers and documentation writers at Microsoft!

Thanks - a week or two more of monitoring the forums, then we'll see...

In response to your second paragraph - of course!

I have installed Microsoft update 14.3.1, after re-installing from scratch Office, and (again...) experienced a severe crash this morning half an hour after start... with destruction of the original document (47 Mo), and damages to my disk file system.

I came back to my previous workaround, which did save my work and my nerves these last 6 months : I have deleted Office from my main disk partition and installed it again on a separate partition used for maintenance (not the recovery one, as I have many other maintenance tools installed...). To me the problem has never been the track changes, but (as I understood)

an incompaibility between Microsoft' Autosave function, and Time Machine routines.

Hoping this helps!

I'm using word 14.3.1 on a macbookpro running Mountain Lion 10.8.2, and I've been experiencing crashes like this on a daily basis. At first it happened typically when I was using the comment function or in full screen mode. Just today, for the first time, it crashed while just editing a basic document with no comments. I may have to go through the elaborate process of uninstalling and reinstalling. But anyway, I just wanted to voice my problem, hoping that someone is paying attention to the prevalence of this issue. I've never encountered such a recurrent problem with a mac computer before; it's one of the reasons I've always opted for macs. If they don't send a softward update to fix this at some point, it's certainly going to color my perception of apple's software stability. I'm in the middle of editing a dissertation with two weeks until my deposit deadline, and the last thing I need is to have to transfer all my material to a different computer or to Pages files. Even the uninstall/reinstall sounds like a hassle.

Make your. Pice known to Microsoft. They should have addressed this issue by now.

Cheers

Pete

I know how you feel, Schmoll, but given that Microsoft Office seems to be the ONLY app that does this, I think your anger--and ours--should be directed principally to Microsoft, not Apple.

bpmangano wrote:

it's certainly going to color my perception of apple's software stability.

Study harder, Office is not Apple Software .... comprehension is an area you should concentrate on.

Sorry Csound1, I'm really sorry, you're right. I did know that, just phrased things carelessly. I've already been in contact with Microsoft about the problem, but I thought it was relevant to this posting thread.

... off to study my comprehension textbook.

🙂, apologies for being a little abrupt there, but please feel free to be very abrupt with Microsoft.😠

WordCrash Expert wrote:

Here's the problem for Mac buyers. Apple sells Microsoft Word as a fully compatible product. It's not. A web search shows complaints about Word 2011 crashing with Lion as far back as 2011.

And on Windows since 2003, Microsoft have ignored their problem for 10 years, why should some other company fix it?

Well I have just found this thread. This has happened to me twice now - not in close succession but once last year and once today and it has ONLY happened with Word. I was working on my (large) document and do the routine "save" so I do not lose my work. A dialog appears saying " This file is read only - to save a copy click ok and give the document a new name in the Save dialog box". The filename offered was ".docx...docx" with the initial ".docx.." highlighted to be changed. I did not use that dialog box (having remembered my experience last time), but did a new "File save as" using a new name and backed up that file for safety, checked they both opened individually, and then closed them down. I then did a "File - open recent" - the original filename was in the list so I attempted to open it but it errored as not being a valid name. I did a search on finder and the original file was gone completely - no trace.

A "verify Disk" found a corrupt file system which I have just had to repair using the HD recovery utility from safe mode. Luckily it did recover and the machine seems back on its feet. This has ONLY happened in Word, and I run a lot of other complex software (photo editing, databases). Even Excel and Powerpoint play well with OS X.

After the repair it's done it again - slightly different message - "You cannot save while the file is in use by another process. Try saving the file with a new name"

Clicking OK wipes the title of the file from the header bar and trying to do another "save" gives an "invalid filename" error. Doing a "file save as" gives the weird ".docx...docx"filename and once again the file in work has gone from the hard drive.

For me this went away with 14.3.1 but has returned with 14.3.2 but that is perhaps coincidence ??

If anyone has any answers I would be really happy - I have 5 days to complete a dissertation and I have just lost a day fighting this - at my wits end.

I have done all the font weeding etc etc.

This won't be what you want to hear, but the only way I've fixed it is to accept all changes, delete all comments and turn off track changes. Word never crashes if you do those things.

I've also uploaded documents into Google Docs or Pages and had not problems, but track changes and comments cause Word to crash in Lion. End of story.

Hi Geoff,

I have all those things turned of already. I have allways had problems with Word crashing when I inserted captions to figures and tables, and went through all the things you mentioned on advice from users in the Microsoft Community. Those crashes continue despite the "fixes" but it is inconvenient and no more as long as you remember to save before each insert.

However, this recent crash is much worse as it deletes the working file completely and potentially dmages the file system. It started this morning after updating to 14.3.2 - as I said in my post earlier I had had this happen once before but 14.3 semed to fix that. The post from last year concerning Time machine seems to make sense with the error about " another procees" - I have turned it off while in Word and we will see what happens.

DuSchmoll,

I have had EXACTLY the same symptoms and I am hoping you have just saved me. Turned off Time Machine while Word was running and so far no save problems - fingers crossed !!

Thank you