Office 2004 #6: General and application-specific issues

We continue to receive sporadic reports of issues with Office 2004. As with the previous days' coverage, we split our coverage between the Office 2004 package as a whole and its individual components.

General Issues

Three product keys Yesterday we covered a report from a user whose version of Office 2004 included three license keys. We received numerous follow-ups from readers that the Student/Teacher version of Office 2004 does indeed include three distinct license keys in order to allow the user to install it on three different Macs.

Word

Slow launch times with Suitcase active Yesterday we noted an issue where Word would take a significant amount of time to launch, displaying the message "Optimizing Font preference Menu performance." Other readers have noted that this issue isn't new to Office 2004, and is in fact associated with having the Suitcase font utility running. Reader Gary Polando writes:

"This issue goes back to at least Office 2001. This will happen when new fonts are added and/or deleted to the system. In the case of us and Office 2001, this happens when adding or deleting sets to Suitcase."

Several other readers wrote in, independently, to say that this is a Suitcase conflict. For example, Anand Commissiong writes:

"I have a similar problem with Word v. X conflicting with Extensis Suitcase. If Suitcase is not running (i.e., if I turn it off, as it loads at login), I have a quick first launch. If it's running, Word's launch is much, much longer. Every other launch is quick."

Entourage

Problems sending mail In what may be an isolated case, reader "wallaceb" reports a problem sending mail which even Microsoft hasn't been able to figure out:

"I'm having issues with Entourage retrieving email, but it won't send. Office v.X version of Entourage worked great, but 2004 is having issues. I've checked all settings, verified with ISP to verify that no settings have changed. OS X 'Mail' program works perfectly with the exact same settings. After spending 58 minutes on a toll-call with Microsoft, they called back and we continued to work together until they closed at midnight EST. They are to call back today, hopefully with a solution."

Issues importing from Entourage v.X We've had isolated reports of issues importing data from Entourage v.X into Entourage 2004. The most common issue is related to importing rules. Entourage 2004 does not import Exchange-related rules, according to Microsoft, but some users have also had trouble importing non-Exchange rules. In addition, Samuel Herschbein notes that, for him, signatures were also not imported.

Exchange receipt issues Reader Daniel Katz notes an issue with Exchange receipts in Entourage 2004:

"I have all my Exchange return receipts filed into a 'receipts' folder, which worked fine in Entourage v.X without a problem. However, I noticed an odd thing when upgrading to Entourage 2004: most of the contents of the 'receipt' folder would not sync with Exchange! Strange is that some of the files did sync and always the same ones, even after recreating the Entourage profile or emptying the cache. These files are visible in Outlook 2003 and Entourage v.X -- why not Entourage 2004?

"I?ve narrowed down the problem to this: Entourage will NOT see Outlook 'Read' or 'Not Read' receipts. It will, however, see Delivery ('Delivered') receipts. You can easily replicate this by sending yourself an e-mail using Outlook 2003, asking for both a Read and Delivery receipt. You will receive both receipts in Outlook 2003, but in Entourage 2004 you will only receive the Delivery receipt. I have duplicated this on more than one Entourage installation and Exchange account. We run Exchange 2003.

"As far as I can tell, this is a MAJOR flaw in Exchange support for Entourage 2004 that did not exist in Entourage v.X?s IMAP support."

Other issues Samuel Herschbein also provided us with details of a few other problems he encountered after upgrading to Entourage 2004:

• A bug in Entourage v.X is still present in 2004. On occasion, when I paste into a message using command-V, Entourage will misinterpret the command-V and send the message (without pasting). Very frustrating explaining to everyone that I'm not a complete moron.
• Entourage 2004 will not read an IMAP server requiring SSL which Entourage v.X read: "Unable to establish a secure connection to x.y.z because the correct root certificate is not installed. If you continue, the information you view and send will not be secure." If continued, Entourage notices new messages but won't let me into my inbox folder: "Mailbox vulnerability - directory /var/mail must have 1777 protection" Apple's Keychain would not read the root certificate for x.y.z. Microsoft provides a "Microsoft Cert Manager" app. It succesfully imported the certificate. I then exported it, then Apple's Keychain read it AOK. Entourage is still complaining about no root certificate even though it's there plain as day & can be viewed OK in their app.

PowerPoint

Slow QuickTime performance The past two days we've covered reader reports of poor QuickTime/video performance in PowerPoint 2004 presentations. We continue to receive confirmations of this issue from readers. Greg Pinelo notes that OS X 10.3 improved performance for PowerPoint v.X, but that PowerPoint 2004 is again very slow:

"Slow, stuttering video was a big problem in PPT for quite some time, but it as alleviated substantially in 10.3 (might have even been fixed in one of the incremental 10.2.x updates). Now the problem is back in PPT 2004. Video in PPT X is fine. Something wrong with 2004. Very annoying to have to keep PPT X around for any presentations in video."

Other issues Reader Troy Anderson reports two other PowerPoint problems (which we haven't yet been able to confirm):

"I noticed a flaw in PowerPoint - selecting arrows for bullet points creates a star bullet point; selecting check marks creates a bullet point. Also, I find that PowerPoint files converted to a PDF (via print) have low resolution output (compared with the older version)."

Office 2004 experiences? Drop us an email at Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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