Office 2008 Problem

[WigglesTheFish]

I have been using my Macbook for a couple of months now, and everything has been relatively perfect... things have pretty much just worked. Well today I was working on a term paper for one of my classes using Microsoft Office 2008 and it crashed no less than 20 times during the few hours I worked today. Luckily I "command+s" a lot so I lost nothing but this was rather irritating. The cause was the same every single time as well, I ran "Spelling & Grammar Check" and after a few ignores or changes it would lock up and crash... I'd send the little report to Microsoft... and restart Word. I have all the latest updates and I have really changed nothing in weeks on my Macbook (only thing I added was Coverstream & two add-ons for Safari - Saft & Pith). Any ideas as to cause or solution to this?

[furby]

Perphaps just corrupt preferences files. Trash (or just move) the office pref files: Quit word first (cmd + Q)

user/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Word.plist and user/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.plist

Does it happen to all the documents you have or just that one you're working on?

[CPressland]

For the time being i'd just do the work in Bean.app

http://www.bean-osx.com/Bean.html

It reads Microsoft Office files pretty well if memory serves me correctly. Microsoft really need to get their ass in gear with MSO2008

[giga Veteran]

Bean and TextEdit use the same .doc engine--it works fine for plain documents, but it gets pretty crude anything more with tables or images.

For that, I recommend Pages or OpenOffice which are the best two to read .doc.

[LTD]

MS stuff ported to Apple isn't that great. I avoid them whenever I can. We have excellent tools of our own.

Consider:

Pages (.doc support)

OpenOffice (.doc support)

NeoOffice (.doc support as well)

Mellel

Bean

NisusWriter Pro

(Maybe there's another one with .doc support, I can't recall.)

TextEdit - surprisingly robust, see here:

http://www.applelinks.com/index.php/more/a...e_all_you_need/

[sn00pie]

I've been using Microsoft Office 2008 since I got my Mac, and apart from a few minor problems, I haven't had any major issues yet. Its slow sometimes, but it keeps chugging along :D

I might pickup iWork just for the hell of it.

[WigglesTheFish]

Perphaps just corrupt preferences files. Trash (or just move) the office pref files: Quit word first (cmd + Q)

user/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Word.plist and user/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.plist

Does it happen to all the documents you have or just that one you're working on?

Tried deleting both of those as you suggested, and tried other equally long documents and same issue happened. After going through a handful or so of grammar/spelling errors (stuff like it yelling over citations or modified quotes like "[t]he" for modified quotes), it still crashes hard core. I can get through it if I constantly pause and save, pushing further and further through the document.

MS stuff ported to Apple isn't that great. I avoid them whenever I can. We have excellent tools of our own.

Consider:

Pages (.doc support)

OpenOffice (.doc support)

NeoOffice (.doc support as well)

Mellel

Bean

NisusWriter Pro

(Maybe there's another one with .doc support, I can't recall.)

TextEdit - surprisingly robust, see here:

http://www.applelinks.com/index.php/more/a...e_all_you_need/

I was getting annoyed enough yesterday to take a look at Pages, you answered a question I had (.doc support). How well will documents created in Pages work with Windows if I have to use a PC for work or class?

[LTD]

You can certainly export a Pages file to .doc.

I hardly ever save anything to .doc format. I just save to .pdf if I want someone else to be able to open the file. It's great, provided no one else has to actually open the file and make adjustments to it. I assume you need to work on your files cross-platform, though. I recommend experimenting with Pages and perhaps the other choices to see which works the best. Failing that, have a look at some reviews (make sure they're current.)

If I recall correctly, Pages does a good job of it. I'm not sure how well it does with reading complex tables and stylesheets, though. For academic papers, even with MLA formatting and the like, there should be no problem. I've always been able to work with my final-year undergrad papers cross-platform with very minimal need to re-adjust the formatting. This was before Pages, though. But if OpenOffice could do it in 2004, I certainly assume Pages can do it even better in 2008. ;)

Most of the apps on that list can save (or "print") to .pdf.

[WigglesTheFish]

You can certainly export a Pages file to .doc.

I hardly ever save anything to .doc format. I just save to .pdf if I want someone else to be able to open the file. It's great, provided no one else has to actually open the file and make adjustments to it. I assume you need to work on your files cross-platform, though. I recommend experimenting with Pages and perhaps the other choices to see which works the best. Failing that, have a look at some reviews (make sure they're current.)

If I recall correctly, Pages does a good job of it. I'm not sure how well it does with reading complex tables and stylesheets, though. For academic papers, even with MLA formatting and the like, there should be no problem. I've always been able to work with my final-year undergrad papers cross-platform with very minimal need to re-adjust the formatting. This was before Pages, though. But if OpenOffice could do it in 2004, I certainly assume Pages can do it even better in 2008. ;)

Most of the apps on that list can save (or "print") to .pdf.

Thanks very much, you answered my question completely. I do believe I will purchase Pages as I want a professional word processor (and presentation software, etc) as I do a lot of writing not only for school but also because I engage in a lot of creative writing. Thanks again!

This is not the first issue I've had with Microsoft Word 2004 & 2008 on my Macbook. I purchased both through my university bookstore and each has disappointed me very much... this was just the most annoying and most used feature that was failing me... If I wasn't expecting crashes so very often, and thus command+s like a madman I would've lost 20 some pages of work...