Office 2004: Service Pack 1 problems, fixes; Font issues
Office 2004: Service Pack 1 problems, fixes; Font issues
Service Pack 1 problems, fixes
"Compile Errors"; solution MacFixIt reader Tim Wilson reported a problem where after applying the Service Pack 1, an alert box containing the message "Compile Error in Hidden Module: AutoExec" appeared every time he attempted to quit Excel 2004. He writes:
"After hitting the OK button, the application quits. Very disconcerting. If I quit a document without explicitly saving changes, I get this Alert and then I get the 'Do you want to save changes' dialog. All document saves seen to happen correctly."
Tim later solved the problem by re-installing Office 2004 from the original CD, then re-applying Service Pack 1 through AutoUpdate: "After reinstalling Office from my upgrade CD and running the updater through the AutoUpdate function (which first downloaded the revised AutoUpdater and then the Service Pack), everything is now behaving normally - no more Compile Errors."
Of important note is that Tim originally used the standalone update currently available from Microsoft's Web site. As such, it seems that using the AutoUpdate function might avoid some pitfalls called by pursuing the manual download option. That said, the reverse (standalone upgrades avoiding problems caused by automatic update methods) has been true for a number of other applications and Mac OS X itself.
If you're having serious problems with either route, you may want to try re-installing Office 2004 from the original CD and update via the other.
Confirmation for fixes David Benesch validates Microsoft's claim of improved video playback performance in PowerPoint, specifically (from Microsoft's release notes): "Performance is improved when you play movies in a slide show. When you play a movie in a slide show, performance is improved, resulting in movies playing more smoothly in most cases."
David writes "A while ago I reported (and others confirmed) that QuickTime performance in Powerpoint 2004 (and the rest of Office 2004) was abysmal. It was completely unusable and was a show-stopper for me moving from v.X to 2004. I am pleased to say that Service Pack 1 (which finally appears via AutoUpdate) fixes this bug. Quicktime movies now play fine, even scaled to an odd size. As a side note, all Office applications do seem 'snappier,' although I don't have any solid evidence to support this."
Font issues We previously reported some issues with using font management utilities with Office 2004 applications.
MacFixIt reader Steve Harrison says he has been using Suitcase X1 with Office 2004 devoid of issues because of certain precautions -- a skeleton System font library, and duplicate free folders elsewhere. Steve writes:
"I have the following System/Library Fonts installed: Geneva, Helvetica, Lucida Grande and Times. My Classic System Folder has Charcoal, Geneva and Monaco. No other fonts are active.
"In a normal setup, after installing Office, I manually move any Library/Fonts, User/Library fonts and all System Folder/Fonts (except for Charcoal, Geneva and Monaco which OS 9 requires) to a folder on the desktop. This ensures that there are no duplicate fonts between these folders and allows Suitcase to manage them instead if necessary. I also remove all fonts from the System/Library/Fonts folder except for Geneva, Keyboard, Lucida Grande, Helvetica and Times (Warning: do not remove the latter 3 if you want your System to operate correctly! - You will have to authenticate 10.3.x or log in as Root 10.2.x to remove fonts from this folder)
"I then add the removed fonts to Suitcase and make sure to scan for duplicates and damage, since Office may crash if it finds duplicate or damaged fonts. This step seems to satisfy any font requirements by the Office programs.
"The crashing problems some users have experienced can be reproduced by removing Geneva from the System/Library/Fonts folder and/or the System Folder/Fonts folder. If this font is not present in the System/Library/Fonts folder (or recognized by OS X in System Folder/Fonts), Entourage and Word will not launch at all (bringing up a crash dialog), while PowerPoint and Excel may experience some problems.
"It seems that removing any other font doesn't impact Office performance. I also am able to use all Presentation Styles in PowerPoint with no issues.
"Make sure to scan your non-system fonts with FontDoctor, FontAgent or Suitcase to eliminate damaged and duplicate fonts before trying to manage them with any font management software. If you are having problems with office crashing and are using font management software, make sure Geneva.dfont (or Geneva Truetype) is present in the System/Library/Fonts folder along with the required Lucida Grande, Helvetica and Times fonts."
MacFixIt reader Jay Christianson was able to run Font Agent Pro with a similar, modified set-up:
"If you had fonts in a running in Classic, and they are duplicates, or previous versions of the ones Office 2004 installs automatically, all Office 2004 apps would error out when starting. If you pull the fonts from Classic System Folder, office will work. [...] on our end, once we figured this out and cleared out the classic fonts folder, we haven't had an issue with the problem. We do run Font Agent Pro, and have had no problems with it."
Macro for bolding speed boost MacFixIt reader Ron Rhodes has devised a small macro that increases the speed of text bolding in Word 2004:
"Many Microsoft Word users have complained that the new version of Word is slow in making a word bold when you select Command-B, or making a word italicized when selecting Command-I, or making a word underlined when selecting Command-U, or when pasting by selecting Command-V.
"I devised a little macro trick to solve this slowness. I noticed that when you select a word and then select Command-B to make the word Bold, it would become immediately bold, with no delay, if you immediately clicked the mouse button after selecting Command-B. So, I devised macros that make bolding, italicizing, underlining, and pasting much, much faster. Each macro simply adds a mouse click after the command: The macro for BOLD would be: Select Bold, Mouse Click
"Simply assign Command-B to this macro. Following this, your bolding will bold much faster when you select Command-B. NOTE: After you start up a new Word document, the first time you select Command-B will take a little longer, only because the macro engine is kicking in. Once you select Command-B a single time, it will be fast thereafter.
"Use this same trick with italicizing, underlining, pasting, etc.
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