Microsoft Office Word crashes using Lion

Hi Bee,

No, I must try that. Promise. I take it this has been working just fine for you now that you did that? Others seemed to think it made no difference.

Tara 9 wrote:

Dear Csound1,

Well don't I feel a bit stupid! I am fairly new to Mac and didn't realize I could open the Word document from within Pages. That's great and it all looks good. So now I am wondering why everyone can't just do this. I guess it makes me suspicious that I'll find some reason why this isn't the best way to solve this problem.

It may be the best way, the only minor glitch is that when you save it you will get a .pages file and Word can not open that, but Pages can export to a .doc file for Word, just 1 extra (minor) step required.

I am glad to know your solution - this is probably a stupid question too but how to you "remote" to your Mac? That sounds useful.

Thanks so much for your help.

Tara

You don't 'remote' to the Mac, you remote from the Mac to the Windows machine. I bought a used minitower (a Dell), installed Office on it, set it for remote access and I use Microsoft RDC for Mac to access the machine. I have a shortcut on the Mac desktop, when I click it my Mac screen becomes the screen for the Winbox, and my keyboard operates the Winbox. I set a path to my documents folder (on my Mac) as the destination for saving files.

But in your case, assuming that Pages works for you, use that.

Tara 9 wrote:

Hi Bee,

No, I must try that. Promise. I take it this has been working just fine for you now that you did that? Others seemed to think it made no difference.

Try, it may be all you need to do.

I too am a professional writer and editor, overseeing a team of 15 writers, so I am aware of the seriousness of this issue and contributed to the earlier discussions. Neither Mircrosoft nor Apple have taken this seriously, which is another issue. However, we did resolve this in our office by simply (I say simply, but it took months of **** to discover) going into Word/preferences/track changes and turning off 'use balloons to display changes'.

We have had no issues since then -- and we had plenty, given our office is now fully Mac, but many of our contributors are running Word in Windows, which we thought may have been a factor, though this is just speculation.

I really appreciate the help I have been getting here. Thank you Csound1, Bee and Collisbm!

Bee, husband said he already tried checking for dup fonts and this didn't help. (He reminded me we'd done this ages ago and I'd forgotten.) Oh well.

Csound1, I appreciate the information about using the mini tower, that was all new and interesting information for me and I agree that if it works to just shift back and forth from Pages and Word then that is the easiest thing for us to do but I like knowing about your remoting operation because you never know - nice to have a "plan B". I did manage to find a MacWorld article that said that for regular text-type documents, switching back and forth between Pages and Word when using Track Changes and Comments seems to function reliably. However, it did warn that if your documents are full of graphics that switching back and forth will most likely bring problems because Apple uses a different system for graphics and it doesn't always translate well. (Just passing this along for other viewers who are interested.)

Collisbm, I am so glad you came back to update us on this. I have just taken a look at using this method and it is fine! I was afraid it would put all the comments at the end of the document (which would be a terrible hassle to continually be flipping back) but it doesn't! (For others reading this, you just click on the footnoted number and it displays a page to the left of the document with all the comments and changes there.) I am pretty excited to try this - again, thank you so much for the update! I am sure my husband would prefer this over messing with Pages.

Tara

I also have experienced frequent crashes with Word, Excel, and Power Point. I couldn't even bring them up long enough to go into "Preferences" to make changes others suggested.

After reading through 9 pages of complaints and ideas, I decided to do as JGreyson suggested on May 13, 2013 (and earlier in DEC 2012). IT WORKED!!!!!!!!

He suggested you go to http://microsoft.com/kb/2398768 and follow as much of the directions as possible to remove the Office 2011 and all its extensions from your computer.

I have a late 2011 MacBook Pro and run the Maverick OSX. The instructions on the Microsoft web site will refer you to make changes using a "Go Menu". On the Maverick there is no Go Menu. I hunted for at least 1/2 an hour even doing Google searches trying to locate that and a button that said Home.

Instead, just click on the Mac HD icon on your desk top. Magically, up will come 4 folders. The one you'll use the most will be the "Library" folder. It's in the "Library" folder that you will find most of the other folders that the Microsoft instructions direct you to (i.e. Preferences, Application Support, Receipts, Fonts, etc)

Not everything the instructions recommends that you move to Trash will be there. Just drag to the trash bin what you can find. Empty your trash, restart you computer, then reinstall Office 2011.

Hope this helps & a big thanks to JGreyson!

Richard

thaikid wrote:

He suggested you go to http://microsoft.com/kb/2398768 and follow as much of the directions as possible to remove the Office 2011 and all its extensions from your computer.

That is the standard method, but you don't follow it as much as possible, you follow it EXACTLY But you have posted an incorrect link (it goes nowhere) the correct link is: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2398768

Posting errors like yours only make it more difficult for others.

I have a late 2011 MacBook Pro and run the Maverick OSX. The instructions on the Microsoft web site will refer you to make changes using a "Go Menu". On the Maverick there is no Go Menu. I hunted for at least 1/2 an hour even doing Google searches trying to locate that and a button that said Home.

Of course there is, here's a picture of it:

If Microsofts instructions are followed exactly this is a simple process, please don't make it seem otherwise.

Sorry about that.

Admittedly, I'm no tech guru (just slightly above average on computers). I did my best to provide accurate information for a solution that helped me to solve a BIG problem with Office 2011.

You were right in that I left the "support" off of the web address. Thanks for correcting!!!

I tried working in "Finder" for the longest time, but could never get to the "library" folder needed to complete the Microsoft instructions for uninstalling Office 2011. I finally found the folders needed in the Hard Drive icon on the desk top. Life suddenly became easier. (I went back to "Go" in the Finder, as in the picture you sent, but still couldn't locate the "Library" folder needed to extract items)

Also, I tried to follow the instructions "EXACTLY" as given by Microsoft. It would have been foolish to do otherwise. But in at least one or two folders, I couldn't locate the "EXACT" requested information in order to drag it into the Trash bin as the instructions suggested. Thus, after a careful search, I moved on to the next numbered item. I used the words in my orginal comment, "in as much as possible", to encourage others to move forward if they experienced similar problems.

My intentions were only to help, NOT to increase stress, confusion or bring more frustration.

The bottom line: JGreyson suggested fix in an earlier forum response from last year corrected my problem.

Richard

thaikid wrote:

Sorry about that.

Admittedly, I'm no tech guru (just slightly above average on computers). I did my best to provide accurate information for a solution that helped me to solve a BIG problem with Office 2011.

You were right in that I left the "support" off of the web address. Thanks for correcting!!!

I tried working in "Finder" for the longest time, but could never get to the "library" folder needed to complete the Microsoft instructions for uninstalling Office 2011.

It's under the Go menu, press the option key while the menu is open and you will see it,

Also, I tried to follow the instructions "EXACTLY" as given by Microsoft. It would have been foolish to do otherwise. But in at least one or two folders, I couldn't locate the "EXACT" requested information in order to drag it into the Trash bin as the instructions suggested. Thus, after a careful search, I moved on to the next numbered item. I used the words in my orginal comment, "in as much as possible", to encourage others to move forward if they experienced similar problems.

Then Office was not correctly uninstalled, this may or may not cause further issues dependent on what operations you did not perform.

My intentions were only to help, NOT to increase stress, confusion or bring more frustration.

Yup, I can see that, but your post makes it look harder than it is, and the error in the URL needed correction.

It's fixed now.

(Thanks a million to Collisbm, Tara1 and others who have really helped me with this problem)

I'd like to share my experience in using the workaround where you turn off the "bubbles" that display changes.

I had constant problems for a year before I found this idea. I have now been using it for months and It has really worked for me -- even with large complicated documents that had guaranteed trouble before.

Some (hopefully) helpful points:

1. I don't need to turn off the balloon completely. You can keep your bubbles while editing.

You only need to uncheck that one box that gives you the author, time and the action buttons (the little buttons at the top of each bubble that allow my clients to accept or reject changes).

2. (My clients need fully functioning bubbles...so that they can accept and reject my changes easily) So when I finish my editing, I just re-check the box again right before my final save. The bubbles appear properly, including the buttons for accepting and rejecting changes. So that keeps clients happy.

Some questions:

3. Sometimes I need to delete my own comment. The only way I can do this is to re-check the box, delete comment, then uncheck the box again. It works, but it's a pain, so...

a) is there another easy way to delete a comment?

b) I'm always a bit scared that flipping back and forward between the 2 types of bubble will make crashing more likely so I avoid it at all costs. Does anyone know if my fears are justified? (or am I just traumatised and paranoid after so many crashes in the past?!)

Many thanks!

Dear Choclike,

I've been meaning to respond to your update. I can't thank you enough for your input. It is EXACTLY what we needed and it worked perfectly! The solution is simple and easy. My husband is a professional writer and he was really in a bind about this issue. He contacted all of his publishers and none of them could help with this (I hope some of them read this). Even the larger publishing houses like Penguin have no clue. As to your question about deleting your own comments, we can't help there (don't know of another way to accomplish it) but so far nothing has crashed for us even with flipping back and forth.

Thanks again for taking the time to update this.