Special Report: Troubleshooting Office 2004

CNET staff

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CNET staff

Sept. 2, 2009 11:34 p.m. PT

25 min read

Covering these and other topics:

General Issues:

Entourage 2004

Word 2004

PowerPoint 2004

Excel 2004

General Issues

Three product keys The Student/Teacher version of Office 2004 includes three distinct license keys in order to allow the user to install it on three different Macs.

Problems with removal The 'Remove Office' application included with the Office 2004 test drive and retail version not only removes Office from the startup disk, but from all disks connected to the Mac.

In addition MacFixIt reader reports that some his old Office v.X Excel files will not open via the double-click method after performing the removal process, requiring him to instead re-open and re-save the files from within Excel - via the "FIle>Open" menu command:

"I downloaded and installed Office 2004 30 day trial. (I am currently using Office X). I didn?t like the trial because every time I opened or closed an application or saved a document I got the -BUY IT!- dialog box. So I used the Remove Office to uninstall it. Now none of my Office X excel files will open. Workaround: open them with Office X and resave them with a new name."

Installation location MacFixIt reader Gabriel Dorado notes that if you follow the included instructions, you may install Office 2004 on the wrong place. While the directions prompt the user to drag and drop the "Microsoft Office 2004" folder "on your hard disk icon," if you do so, the applications will not be saved on the Applications folder, but on the first level of the hard disk. Instead, drag and drop over the Applications folder. (Problems often arise when applications are located outside their designated folder.)

MathType compatibility on the way There is a conflict between MathType 5.0 and Office 2004. We've received word from Peter Cooper, Director of Engineering at Design Science (MathType's developer) indicating that compatibility is on the way.

"MathType 5.1 will be available shortly, and this will be fully compatible with Office 2004. This will be a free upgrade for owners of MathType 5.0."

Double-click failure: possible fix Some users experience a problem where users are unable to double-click files created in Office v.X and older versions to trigger opening with Office 2004.

MacFixIt reader Rob Emslie had a similar problem, and found a solution that worked in his case:

"I had the same problem after installing and then deleting Office 2004 test drive. The solution I found was to go into Fontbook and resolve all the font redundancies created by Office 2004 and then to run Cocktail which re-bound and fixed permissions. After the re-start everything worked fine with Office X (documents). I don't know which of the above things fixed the problem, but they are all good maintenance procedures to practice."

Microsoft 'aware' of registration issues Some purchasers of Office 2004 cannot register the software with their given product keys, disallowing use of some online support resources.
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Microsoft is aware of the issue, and is working individually with customers to resolve the issue. MacFixIt reader William Schmidt writes: "I had the same registration issue. I called Microsoft because the on-line support via PassPort doesn't work either because it requires the product ID. The support specialist told me they were aware of the problem and that if I still couldn't register it in a week to call back and they would generate a new product ID for me."
Eliminating duplicate notifications There is an issue where Office 2004 upgraders receive dual-reminders of calendar events delivered by the "Office Notifications" application.
This problem is caused by the persistence of Office v.X's database daemon, which will continue to provide notification until removed.

A temporary solution is to remove the reference to the older "Microsoft Database Daemon" from System Preferences -> Accounts -> YourUserName -> Startup Items in Panther, or System Preferences -> Login Items in Jaguar.

However, simply removing the database daemon will not permanently resolve the problem with dual notifications if Office X is launched again, as it will reinstall the daemon.

MacFixIt reader Bruce Klutchko writes "The workaround is to not use Office X after installing Office '04, or perhaps the old trick of placing a locked file with the same name in the directory would prevent the automatic launching of the older daemon on login."

Microsoft error reporting, data collection policy Office 2004 has now a new built-in "Microsoft Error Reporting" feature. If you are working with an application like Word 2004 and it crashes, a window shows allowing you to:

Recover your work

Send crash report to Microsoft

As pointed out by Gabriel Dorado, these tasks are actually performed by the "Microsoft Error Reporting" application at "/Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office/Microsoft Error Reporting.app"

If you are interested in more information about the Microsoft Data Collection Policy, visit http://oca.microsoft.com/en/dcp20.asp.

Long filenames Office 2004 apps, unlike the v.X versions, support OS X's long filenames, and can save documents when the file path plus the file name account for more than 263 characters.

Problems downloading test drive? Mirror If you are having trouble downloading the Microsoft Office 2004 30-day test drive from Microsoft's site (the download.microsoft.com server is down periodically), you may want to try the WAMUG (West Australian Macintosh Group) mirror.
Alternatively (or if you have a slow connection), Microsoft offers the 2004 test drive on a CD for US $5.

Entourage 2004

Certain e-mail messages can crash program As noted in the MacFixIt forums and by several readers, email messages formatted in specific manners (sometimes including those that contain no recipients ('undisclosed recipients'), no subject and no message body are causing Entourage to crash.

There are two MacFixIt forum threads about this problem:

Thread 1

Thread 2

Reader Jonathan Greenberg, who is experiencing this issue, writes "There seems to be some indication that filters may be what is causing the crash (I do use filters), but I can't tell you which ones...

As noted for a similar problem with Mail.app, where a single problematic message disallows other, non-offending messages to download from the server, you might want to try a Webmail interface if your ISP offers one, or temporarily check your e-mail with an alternative client. After deleting the problematic message, the rest of your inbox should flow as usual.

Greenberg adds "Using a webmail interface to my email, I found the offending email and deleted it. Upon trying to check my email again with Entourage, my other email successfully downloaded."

MacFixIt reader Sheldon Furst offers confirmation of the issue, and the solution:

"I'd just like to confirm the Entourage crash problem with certain Emails. I didn't have the energy to isolate exactly which message was causing the problem. But I can state that turning off Rules did NOT solve the problem. Only solution was to manually delete the mail from the POP server."

Rebuilds, restarts for Entourage launch problems Several readers have reported problems launching Entourage 2004.

For most readers, this issue can be resolved by rebuilding the Entourage database - a task accomplished by quitting all running Office applications, then holding down the "option" key while starting Entourage.

If a typical rebuild is not successful, the advanced option should be used.

Rebuilding the Entourage database will also optimize its data usage, using up to 25% less disk space depending on its original size.

Silk conflict There appears to be a conflict between Unsanity's Silk and Entourage 2004. Silk is a haxie that enables the Quartz text rendering and smoothing introduced in Mac OS X 10.1.5 in all Carbon applications. This allows antialiased text in a variety of third-party apps, including Office 2004 programs.

MacFixIt reader Scott Shaffer writes

"I have had no problems after installation until I tried to use Silk. This caused an immediate shut down and the message mentioned above. This problem went away after shutting off Silk for Entourage."

Another reader offers separate confirmation, as well as some detail on how he narrowed down the culprit to Silk:

"Just wanted to note that I recently installed Entourage 2004 and it would immediately quit when launched. I checked out your forums and other sites and tried rebuilding the database files as well as running Cocktail to fix any permission issues but nothing worked. Upon looking at the crash report generated by the new Microsoft Error Reporting feature, I noticed a "Bad Exception Error" with (Unsanity?s) Silk. I turned off Silk completely and restarted, then launched Entourage and it finally worked! I now have Silk running but included Entourage not to be "silked" in the exclude applications list. All other Office 2004 Apps work fine with Silk enabled."

Exchange synchronization delays, cause MacFixIt reader Greg Pinelo notes a problem with his installation of Entourage 2004 where synchronization with the Exchange server is not live, and instead occurs at unspecified time intervals:

"Entourage 2004 appears to have an undocumented, uncontrollable sync interval for Exchange accounts. It is absolutely, positively not a true "live sync" like an IMAP account. I set up two accounts, one Exchange, one IMAP (same Exchange server) and monitored them side by side. Messages show up in the Exchange account anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes after than they show up in the IMAP account. In fact, I sometimes get messages in my Blackberry (!) before they appear in my Exchange inbox. The interval for syncing cannot be edited, and a sync cannot be forced. Entourage does not even immediately sync upon launching the program; you have to wait about a minute for it start. A sync can also not be interrupted once it begins. Entourage also does not sync more than one Exchange folder at the same time. For example, it will not update the Inbox while it is also updating Sent Items. Periodically, Entourage gets stalled and needs to be re-launched in order to get things moving again.

Here is the technical explanation, according to Microsoft, for what is happening:

"Entourage subscribes to be notified via UDP when new messages arrive. Some network topologies may not allow UDP packets between the server and the client machine, in which case we poll every few minutes."

So, it seems, Mr. Pinelo's networking setup does not allow automatic synchronization. Unfortunately, users in this situation will likely need to speak to their network manager to achieve live updates on Exchange accounts.

UDP stands for User Datagram Protocol, and is used by Exchange in lieu of TCP to transmit small packets of data.

Image attachment downloading Some readers have reported that Entourage 2004 is not downloading images automatically, despite enabling users setting the application to do so. This is actually a security/privacy feature of Entourage 2004: The "automatic" setting only applies to images included in messages sent by people in your Entourage Address Book or sent by addresses included in the Mailing List Manager. The Entourage documentation states "To view all pictures in [messages not from such addresses], click 'Download pictures' at the top of the message."

Importing issues Art Boyle reports that Entourage 2004 loses email links when importing mail from Entourage v.X:

"Another importing issue for entourage 2004 from Entourage [v.X] is that it loses all email links; it just keeps links for the calendar and files. I imported a database of 1,800 contacts and 6,000 emails and all the links between the emails and the contacts are gone. I tried reinstalling and importing several times to no avail."

Problems using SSL over POP, solutions Several readers have noted that in some cases, Entourage 2004 cannot establish a secure connection with an SMTP server using SSL. Users receive the error message "server may be down..." when the problem occurs. Oddly, receiving emails via POP accounts using SSL works properly.

Most users concur that neither Apple's Mail.app nor Entourage v.X exhibit the same issues under the same circumstances and SSL settings.

There is even a note confirming the incompatibility on AT&T 'WURD' website which states 'Note: At this time, Entourage 2004 will not function with AT&T Worldnet through another ISP or DSL.'

MacFixIt Eric Oshlo found that using an SSL enabler was the only way to make SSL over POP mail sending work with AT&T and possibly other providers:

"I have been on the phone with both AT&T and Microsoft most of the afternoon and it's not clear that a resolution is being pursued by either party. The only workaround I?ve found is to install SSL Enabler (available here: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/unix_open_source/sslenabler.html) and configure Entourage's AT&T account SMTP server entry to point to my internal machine address, thereby letting SSL enabler handle the connection. It gets me by, but hopefully Microsoft will fix whatever caused the problem to arise in Entourage 2004."

Symantec AVF conflict Entourage 2004 appears to be causing the anti-virus on the Exchange Server (not the Mac running Entourage 2004) to "quarantine" message attachments.

Several readers receiving the message: "Symantec AVF detected that you sent a message with an unscannable attachment."

Hotmail account issues, fixes Joel Nelson is having problems getting his Hotmail account to work with Entourage 2004, and received an interesting response regarding the issue from Microsoft support:

"I have not been successful in getting Hotmail to work with Entourage 2004. It keeps giving me a (-3210) error. I called Microsoft and MSN and the response, even from the Entourage support team, is that they're not aware of the issue. MSN says that Entourage 2004 isn't compatible with Hotmail; users must use Outlook Express 5.0.6 or Entourage v.X."

Dan Staffieri reports that re-creating the Hotmail account can resolve the issue in some cases "I had a similar problem with Entourage 2004 not working with hotmail ( Entourage 2004 imported my prefs from my previous version of Entourage). I deleted the hotmail account info and recreated it within the Entourage 2004 and everything works fine."

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 successfully 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.

Word 2004

Workaround for some formatting problems with Word v.X file A MacFixIt reader has a suggested workaround for users experiencing problems with inline images in Word v.X documents that do not open properly in Word 2004: "I have had the same issue with Word 2004 opening some old Office v.X files. I have found the problem is when there are grayscale images placed they will not show up in Word 2004. I opened the document in v.X copied the picture and pasted it into Photoshop. I then converted the picture to RGB and copied/pasted into the same document in Word 2004. My B/W and color images are drawn correctly. "

Problems with DYMO labelwriter, solution Reader Monty Lee reports that the DYMO Labelmaker software, which worked with Office v.X, doesn't inherently function with Office 2004:

"I have been unable to get the interface between the DYMO Labelmaker software and Microsoft Office 2004 to work. It works fine in Office.X with the DYMO icon appearing in the Word toolbar, but it doesn't in Word 2004. There is nothing on DYMO's site other than a reference to Service Pack 1, but that only applies to Office.X."

The solution (provided you still have Office v.X installed) is to move the DYMO add-in from over from the Office v.X installation to the Office 2004 installation. The file is located in "Microsoft Office X/Office/Startup/Word/DLS6WordAddin.dot

Copy this file to "Microsoft Office 2004/Office/Startup/Word/DLS6WordAddin.dot" and restart Word 2004. The DYMO icon should now appear in the toolbar.

"Stuck" Find dialog MacFixIt reader Gabriel Dorado reports an issue with the Find dialog in Word 2004:

"Sometimes it is impossible to close the Find window (Find and Replace) in Office 2004. It gets stuck usually after working with it and performing find and replace actions. Clicking on the red button to close it does nothing. Workaround: close the open Word file(s) and then close the Find and Replace window. Alternatively quit Word and open it again."

Spell-checker changes views Gabriel Dorado reports an issue with Word's spell-checker that affects page layout views:
"If you run the spell checker and a hit (a word not found in the dictionary) is found in the footer then the document is changed from its 'Page Layout' view to the 'Normal' view and remains in Normal view when the spell checking is complete. In other words, if the spell checking reaches the footer, then the document view goes from Page Layout to Normal and remains as Normal afterwards."
Problems re-saving Windows XP-created files, solution Word 2004 may (in some instances) have problems saving changes to ".doc" and ".txt" files created with Word for Windows XP and earlier versions. If you open such files with Word 2004, make changes and save them, the files may be saved without such changes and no warning is issued about it.

The workaround, as reported by a few readers, is to use the "Save as" feature and create a new file.

Dictionary and Thesaurus changes Michael Green notes some unwelcome changes to Word 2004's dictionary/thesaurus scheme:

"Apart from the fact that Word's Dictionary and Thesaurus are now combined in one window, making the space for definitions extremely cramped, for some very obscure reason MS has also changed the behavior of the Thesaurus.

"Instead of a 'Replace' button, we now have an 'Insert' button. Very dumb.

"Whereas in earlier versions of Word you could but the cursor next to a word to have it come up in the Thesaurus, and painlessly change the original word with the Replace button, now if you do this, it inserts the new word without deleting the original.

"Worse: unless, to avoid this problem, you first select the whole word you want to change and then reduce the selection so as not to include the space following, the new word replaces your selection without providing a space, which means the new word has no choice but to join up with the one following and wait for you to enjoy yourself manually inserting a new space between them (if you are able to catch my Microsoft drift)."

Symbol fonts can cause problems; solutions Documents created in Word v.X with Symbol fonts like Wingdings may not display properly in Word 2004.

One reader writes "In fact, opening the 'insert symbol' option in Word 2004 reveals that the aforementioned fonts have missing characters when compared to the Word X options. Furthermore, PowerPoint 2004 will display ALL Wingdings characters fine. Therefore, the problem seems to be related to the way Word 2004 handles fonts. Other applications will read the aforementioned fonts without problems at all.

"One temporary solution is to delete the system font caches and restart the computer (using applications like Font Cache Cleaner). But the problem will resurface after further restarts.

David Pesetsky reports problems using some phonetic symbol fonts with Word 2004:

"I am in linguistics, and have occasion to use phonetic symbols (symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet) quite often. I am very happy that Word 2004 allows me to use Unicode characters for these characters, which will simplify things a lot in the future. But I am less than happy that Word 2004, for some reason, refuses to recognize my older phonetic fonts. I get rectangles, instead of characters, in documents. On the "insert symbol" menu, they show up as Roman alphabet characters, evidently from some other font. It's not just a problem with the screen display. The characters print as rectangles as well."

Reducing number of installed fonts, disabling suitcase can increase launch times One reader writes "I have a large number of fonts installed via FontBook. If I drastically reduce the number of fonts loaded (down to 200), Word's font optimization upon cold system boot takes only a few seconds. Otherwise, it can take several minutes."

If you find Word 2004 stalls on the displaying the message "Optimizing Font preference Menu performance" message, the problem may be 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."

EndNote compatibility: New version will be required The developers of the EndNote citation software have posted a message to their Web site indicating compatibility problems with Office 2004, as noted by a number of readers:

"Due to changes introduced by Microsoft in the newly released Office 2004 for Mac OSX, EndNote's Cite While You Write (CWYW) tools are not currently compatible with Word 2004. The tools will not automatically install into Word 2004, and if manually installed they will not function. This is a known incompatibility for which there is no solution. At this time there are no plans to make EndNote 7 or older versions compatible with Word 2004.

EndNote's product page now reads "Due to changes introduced by Microsoft in the newly released Office 2004 for Mac OSX, EndNote's Cite While You Write (CWYW) tools are not currently compatible with Word 2004. The tools will not automatically install into Word 2004, and if manually installed they will not function. This is a known incompatibility. We plan to release a version of EndNote that is compatible with Office 2004 for Mac OSX."

Character spacing Another apparent type issue in Word 2004 involves proper character spacing for non-proportional (each character uses the same amount of space) fonts:

John McDonnell writes "This is an old problem that used to have a fix. May go back to Office 98 Mac. I prepare large number of docs in straight courier 12 (old style typeface) which is a non-proportional type. The line spacing and letter spacing for 'normal' would come out correctly for page formats I submit to courts. However, in a prior Word upgrade, the line and character spacing got slightly expanded. So, text that once fit in 6 inch margin now has last word spill to next line. Also, line spacing is a bit larger, so instead of 56 lines per standard page, it comes out to about 53. All is off the standard courier 12 pt, 6 inches per line.

"The old fix was to go to compatibility and check "use printer metrics.' That would realign everything back to proper spacing. Now, in word 2004, that fix is not working."

Since Word 2004 uses the same layout engine as Windows Word uses, there may be a valid explanation for this change. One MacFixIt reader write "In the past, the lines were laid out using the apple layout code called 'format line.' This was responsible for all sorts of compatibility issues with the Windows cousin, so Microsoft developed 2004 to be compliant with that.

"My guess is that (some documents) would have printed differently to Windows Word in the past and now will print the same. As for the on-screen character spacing, this is one on of the drawbacks of line services. Its on-screen rendering can be a little funky. In terms of printing and X-plat, however, it's a huge leap forward.
Miscelleanous improvements
Word's "Track changes" no longer attributes edits to "unknown" -- it correctly identifies the person who made the edits.
Word no longer changes editing attributions when it auto-corrects a word or auto-formats characters.
Word no longer frequently quits "unexpectedly" when copying/cutting and pasting content.

PowerPoint 2004

Tweaks for speed increases MacFixIt reader Paul Davis found that some pre-existing were moving much more slowly presentations in PowerPoint 2004 than in PowerPoint v.X. The solution, he found, was to reset the custom animations for the individual presentation files:

"One reason (for the slowdown) is that the settings for custom animations are interpreted differently. I see the animations appearing 'from the bottom' (a 'property') of the animation, which did not previously occur. If I delete the custom animations and reestablish them, I can get rid of the 'from the bottom' property and speed is then significantly enhanced.

Custom animations determine how each item in the slide will render during the slide show.

Problems with Windows-created files Several readers have reported problems opening older files created in Windows versions of PowerPoint in PowerPoint 2004:

John Harbison writes "I opened 10 randomly selected Powerpoint files, all created in the past six months by different people. In every case, where the file had been made by others who were using various Windows versions of Powerpoint, the program crashed and the file could not be opened. Files I had previously created using Office X were fine. Fortunately, I still have the Office X version on my hard drive, and that still works fine with PC files. How could Microsoft not pre-test this absolutely essential functionality?"

Some readers report that PowerPoint slides viewed with PowerPoint 2004 but created with Windows XP and other Windows versions of PowerPoint sometimes display unwanted "Click to add title" and "Click to add subtitle" options that are not displayed when viewed on the Windows machine.

One reader writes "Check your presentation slide-by-slide with PowerPoint 2004 and delete such boxes (they show only on some screens). Then save it to keep changes."

Readers report that PowerPoint 2004 does not show properly some pictures when opening presentations created with PowerPoint for Windows XP and earlier versions. Pictures may appear displaced and even truncated.

Also, PowerPoint 2004 may take a long time "converting metafiles" (Graphics Filter) when opening presentations created with PowerPoint for Windows XP and earlier versions.

Symbol font issues Like other Office 2004 suite components, PowerPoint 2004 has some issues with symbol fonts - leading some users to remove them from their presentations for proper operation.

Martin Forrester writes "If I open a file created in PowerPoint X that uses text in the Symbol font, in PPT 2004 the characters display in some other non-Symbol font, although PPT 2004 seems to think they are still in Symbol font, since if I select those characters then Symbol is listed as the font in the formatting palette or in the Format Font dialog. However if the characters were inserted by using 'Insert Symbol' in PowerPoint X, still using the Symbol font, then they display fine in PowerPoint 2004."

Slow QuickTime performance, reducing size helps Several readers have confirmed problems with QuickTime performance in PowerPOint 2004. 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."
Tom Ryder notes that decreasing the movie's playback size alleviates the performance bottleneck in some cases:

"I have noticed a similar problem. Reducing the size of the video to half the size of the frame improves playback. But there is definitely a problem when the video is larger. I took have a 1ghz PowerBook and am running 10.3.3. And Office 2004."

Printing large documents MacFixIt reader Pedro reports that printing certain long presentations has become problematic in PowerPoint 2004:

"I have had issues with PowerPoint 2004. Long presentations with many graphics fail to print in PowerPoint 2004. For instance, I only get the first 18 slides to print using PowerPoint 2004. They whole 100+ slide presentation prints on PowerPoint v.X. This presentation was developed on PC using Office 2002. Moreover, of the slides that print, some of the text in the graphics are all garbled. I believe the graphics were developed using Vision 2002. PowerPoint v.X prints the graphics fine."

Record Narration David Grieve reports an issue with the "Record Narration" functionality in PowerPoint 2004:

"I have been unable to make the Power Point 'Record Narration' work. This option is under the slide show menu (I can record, insert, and playback sounds under the 'Insert movies and sound' menu.) Following the Help menu instructions, I get as far as 'click the record button.' The main menu disappears and nothing appears to be happening. The Sound Preferences shows recording activity but there is no other indication other than that an AIFF file is created on the HD. The control- click option brings up a contextual menu with no reference to Record Narration as expected. The AIFF file will not open in QT. I have to force quit to get the Power Point menu back. When I try to insert the AIFF file created using the "Insert movies and sound" menu item, The sound button is placed on the slide. When I try to play that sound, Power Point crashes and I am offered an option to forward the crash log to MS--Which I did."

QuickTime panoramas We've received a few reports that QuickTime panoramic movies are not playing properly in PowerPoint 2004 presentations. One MacFixIt reader writes "I just downloaded the test drive and i have found that PowerPoint 2004 does not play quicktime VR panoramas which are embedded in slides. The initial view of the panorama is displayed but the user is unable to pan around using the mouse. The same PowerPoint file works fine in PowerPoint v.X"

Password-protected slide shows on Windows machines Mike Robertson notes that he is still unable to open password-protected PowerPoint files in Windows XP that were created on his Mac

"I had hoped that Office 2004 for Mac would fix the problem with being unable to open password protected PowerPoint slide shows from the XP versions of PowerPoint. That is apparently not the case. I still can't open them from PowerPoint in Office 2004."

Excel 2004

"Red X" problem gone MacFixIt reader Brett Gaspers reports that a problem where Excel-created images placed in PowerPoint presentations did not display correctly on some Windows systems is gone from the 2004 release:

"The red X problem when pasting graphics from say, Excel into PowerPoint and then attempting to view on Windows (and vice versa) appears to be gone! I could always reproduce this by copying a chart with vertical text on the y-axis and copying it as a picture to PowerPoint. This was a major pain when working with clients who are Windows-based."

"The bad news, at least with Excel, is that it appears to be much slower in calculating. My company developed a forecasting model in Excel that does Monte Carlo simulation. Running a simulation in Office v.X took 12 minutes, in 2004 almost 16. That is a pretty substantial difference (33%)! I had restarted my system prior to running both tests."

Problems opening some Windows files gone Versions of Excel previous to 2004 (version 11.0.0) could not open some Excel files created on Windows PC machines. You got: "Error in loading DLL". It appears that Excel 2004 opens such Excel files.

Resources

Three product keys

Problems with removal

Installation location

MathType compatibility on ...

Double-click failure: poss...

Microsoft 'aware' of registration issues

Eliminating duplicate noti...

Microsoft error reporting,...

Long filenames

Problems downloading test ...

Certain e-mail messages ca...