[DominikHoffmann]

After installing Office 2008 on my MacBook Pro and running AutoUpdate first, before running any of the Office apps, I cannot successfully launch any of them.

When I launch one of them, let's say Word, I see the icon bouncing in the dock and then disappearing, while Office Setup Assistant is launching. The Office Setup Assistant then asks me to choose to or not to allow feedback about program performance to be sent back to Microsoft. Finally, Office Setup Assistant's final screen allows me to click "Finish." When I do, Office Setup Assistant quits and AutoUpdate launches. When I click on "Check for Updates," AutoUpdate doesn't find any.

All this is after I applied the permissions changes suggested by MacWorld's article "Microsoft promises fix for Office 2008 installation issues." Another clue might be that I did a custom install, omitting Entourage.

[pendragon]

Over the past few months, I have been collecting Office problems and their solutions. Alas, I do not know which, if any, of these five will work for you.

Should you be successful (or not), please let us know what worked (or not).

FWIW: I too did a custom install and did not install Entourage and have had no problems. So I doubt if that is relevant.

Five possible fixes:

1. Word Settings: If you're experiencing a crash on launching Word 2008, try throwing out its settings file. Look in your home directory - that's /Users/ and your account's short name - in Library > Preferences > Microsoft. Toss Word Settings (10) and relaunch Word 2008.

2. Remove the Microsoft AU Daemon from Startup Items: Open System Preferences, then navigate to "Accounts" and click "Startup Items," then remove Microsoft AU Daemon.

3. Corrupt normal template: The normal template file -- located at ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates/Normal.dotm appears to be corrupt in many cases of crashing. The fix for the problem is as follows: create a new user account, launch Word 2008 under the new account (it should launch properly if this is the cause), then copy the aforementioned file from the clean (working) account to the same location in the old (crashing) account, replacing the corrupt file.

4. Corrupt Microsoft.plist, etc. files Go to ~/Library/Preferences and delete everything that starts with com.microsoft.... Re-attempt application launch and usage.

5. Corrupt fonts: Remove any recently added fonts temporarily, or use a tool like Font Doctor to search for corrupt fonts.

HTH

[JKT]

6. Delete Office 2008 and get your money back for a half-baked, steaming pile of ****.

[DominikHoffmann]

Originally Posted by pendragon 

Should you be successful (or not), please let us know what worked (or not).

Alas, I have been unsuccessful. I went down this route:

1. I deleted everything com.microsoft.* from ~/Library/Preferences/, as well as ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/.

2. I deleted ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/.

3. I checked and found that I didn't (yet?) have the Microsoft AU Daemon among my login items.

4. I erased /Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/, /Library/Fonts/Microsoft/ and /Library/Application Support/Microsoft/ before reinstalling the application. This time, I again customized my install, but did only nix Microsoft Messenger from the list.

5. I resolved font conflicts resulting from having Office 2004's fonts in /Library/Fonts/ where the Office 2008 installer doesn't suspect them (it only looks in ~/Library/Fonts/.

Still, I get the same behavior.

[pendragon]

Two more suggestions:

1. Create a new User Account. Log in to the new account and then launch Word. What happens?
2. Reboot in Safe Boot mode, then restart normally. Any improvement?

[pendragon]

If the above brings no joy, and my help is not, perhaps others, with more expertise, will soon post and relieve your angst.

But if that is not to be, you might try a search or posting at the Microsoft Mac Office Forum (hosted by Google). Discussions - microsoft.public.mac.office | Google Groups

Many (most?) of the responders are M$ Mac MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals), so the “solution” you seek may well be therein. Or so we hope...

[DominikHoffmann]

Originally Posted by JKT 

6. Delete Office 2008 and get your money back for a half-baked, steaming pile of ****.

Actually, I'd like to relate my very pleasant experience with calling Microsoft's tech support. I got through in less than five minutes. The woman answering my call was very knowledgeable and didn't make me go through a bunch of troubleshooting steps with her when she sensed that I had done a fair amount of it already. Instead, she let me described what I had done. The only thing I had not yet attempted was to repair permissions on my boot drive. I will receive an email message tomorrow, asking me whether the case can be closed. My response will go into the record of the case, in other words that message from her will not have a dummy return address.

Rather than seeing the Mac Business Unit people at Microsoft as traitors I see less as infiltrants and more as hostages with a bit of Stockholm Syndrome.

All this is to say that so far I am far from disgruntled.

[DominikHoffmann]

It turns out that, because I had installed Office from a disk image I had made immediately after pulling out the disk, I was working with a corrupted installer. I recreated the disk image from scratch and this time it worked.

Thanks to all who responded!

[pendragon]

Dominik,

Thanks for posting the "solution". It would have been a very long time, if ever, I divined upon the answer.

Also 'tis good to know you received first-rate support from M$.

[JKT]

Originally Posted by DominikHoffmann 

Actually, I'd like to relate my very pleasant experience with calling Microsoft's tech support<snip>

It still doesn't stop the software from being a half-baked, steaming pile of **** that should never have been released in its current form. Full of bugs and full of UI discrepancies and inconsistencies that would embarrass a novice shareware developer (posted as one example of the many, many issues with the software):

Betalogue � Microsoft

I don't see the MBU as traitors, just as developers of consistently bad ports of Office. They have yet to produce a single decent version (in terms of stability, compatibility and proper integration with the OS it runs upon - the mediocrity of the actual features is not their fault after all).

[bonoman]

Originally Posted by DominikHoffmann 

It turns out that, because I had installed Office from a disk image I had made immediately after pulling out the disk, I was working with a corrupted installer. I recreated the disk image from scratch and this time it worked.

Thanks to all who responded!

Dominik, if you're still around, can you explain that again slowly enough for me to understand too? ... My copy of Word 2008 crashes 2-5 sec after launch. Every time!! I just installed it from the installer disc. I'm trying to understand if i could possibly have done something that corrupted the installer too but I didn't quite get it what happened with yours.

I haven't dared to try launching the rest. As long as I don't do that, xls files seem to open by default in Excel 2004.

It is unbelievable that they could release something this unreliable. I just opened the box and installed according to instructions. I was hoping to be able to work more efficiently. Instead I get this .... It's a total disaster for my company. Brrrr .... If only there was an option where you could pay 50% more and get the debugged version .... I'd opt for that any day.

[DominikHoffmann]

Originally Posted by bonoman 

Dominik, if you're still around, can you explain that again slowly enough for me to understand too?

What I usually do is to make a backup of any CD- or DVD-ROM to a disk image file right away. I then store it on my server for later reference, since the information can be read from a disk image, even over the network, much faster than from the physical medium. Plus, it's much easier to find the disk image than the CD, which is impossible to access, when you're away from home.

I do this by inserting the disk and launching Disk Utility. I then locate the CD or DVD volume in Disk Utility's volumes pane and clicking on and highlighting the line that has the name of the disk as it appears mounted in the Finder. I then choose File->New...->Disk Image from "name of volume"... and save it on the server.

In the case of the Office 2008 DVD, the name of the volume didn't appear in Disk Utility at all, even though the disk mounted in the finder. Thinking that this was some kind of copy protection scheme, I instead used DMGConverter to make the disk image. It was that disk image, from which I installed, that caused me the grief for which I started this thread.

A day later it occurred to me that I could have had better success installing from the physical medium but decided to give making a new disk image with Disk Utility another try. This time it worked.

Please let me know if you seek further clarification.

Dominik

[bonoman]

Thanks a lot Dominik!

OK, I've now narrowed it down to a (probably) corrupt file 'SwedishGrammar.proofingtool' by following the hints from the crash log. I don't know if this might be a universal problem with that particular module or if it was accidentally corrupt on my (original) installer disk. [How I wish that it would have been the Japanese or Italian grammar instead ... ]

The full story for anyone interested: Word 2008 would always crash a few seconds after coming up. I tried removing it an re-installing with no improvement. The other day a client sent me a document in english, which I could open, and Word didn't crash. Adding that the crash-log included references to 'SwedishGrammar' in the last few steps before crashing, I tried to restart Word with the entire folder 'Office/Shared Applications/Proofing Tools' dragged to the Desktop. That helped, although now I had no proofing tools. Trial and error concluded that the file 'SwedishGrammar.proofingtool' was the offender. Hopefully I'll eventually be able to get hold of a healthy one.

Thanks, all!