Office 2008: Security issue acknowledged, fix; font distortion fix; more
Major issues persist.
[Monday, January 28th]
Microsoft acknowledges security issue, offers fix As previously reported, Microsoft Office 2008 package incorrectly sets the owner of several files it installs to user ID 502. In a nutshell, this means that whatever user is assigned this user ID (502) will have full read/write access to the following directories:
- /Library/Automator/ (if it doesn't exist already)
- /Library/Fonts/Microsoft
- /Library/Application Support/Microsoft
- /Applications/Microsoft Office 2008
By default, the first administrator on a Mac OS X is assigned user ID 501. The way the Office installer works, even if the administrator installs the program, user ID 502 will own the aforementioned directories. This applies even if User ID 502 doesn't yet exist. As soon as an account with that ID is created, it will have read/write access to the directories.
Now Microsoft has released a statement indicating that issue will be corrected in a future update to Office 2008 and offering the following procedure to manually adjust the ownership permissions:
- Log in to the computer by using a user account with administrator privileges.
- In /Applications/Utilities, open Terminal.
- In the Terminal window, type the following command on one line, and then press RETURN. /usr/bin/sudo /bin/chmod -R a-st "/Applications/Microsoft Office 2008" "/Library/Automator" "/Library/Fonts/Microsoft" "/Library/Application Support/Microsoft"
- When prompted, enter the password for the user account that you used to log in in step 1.
- In the Terminal window, type the following command on one line, and then press RETURN: /usr/bin/sudo /usr/sbin/chown -h -R root:admin "/Applications/Microsoft Office 2008" "/Library/Automator" "/Library/Fonts/Microsoft" "/Library/Application Support/Microsoft"
- If prompted, enter the password for the user account that you used to log in in step 1.
Font distortion (letters run together)? Disable Microsoft fonts If you're having problems with font distortion in various applications after installing Office 2008, try temporarily removing the Microsoft fonts folder from /Library/Fonts and restarting. This may alleviate the issue.
In other cases, simply removing duplicate fonts may solve the issue.
MacFixIt reader Sasha writes:
"I too had that same problem with Safari and other apps overlaying characters. What worked for me was disabling all duplicate MS fonts. No problems since."
Cannot save to network drive We previously reported problems saving files to network volumes from within Office 2008 applications along with several workarounds. We've now received reports that mounting the target share as an SMB mount, rather than an AFP mount solves the issue.
UPDATE: A number of users have now reported success with one of our previously reported workarounds -- disabling or updating anti-virus software. Biill Robertson writes: "We experienced the "Cannot save to network drive" problem a few years ago (and again just a few months ago) with Office 2004 installs, and our Netware servers, and more recently with a netserve box. In all cases, the problem was resolved by upgrading VirusScan from version 7.x (or earlier) to the most recent version, 8.x."
Problems importing Entourage identities Users have reported problems importing Entourage identities from Office v.X into Office 2008.
MacFixIt reader Arno writes:
"I have a database that is just over 3GB, containing different POP, IMAP accounts and an Exchange account. I found out that importing that database simply isn't done at all. The Office 2008 Assistant runs the import sequence no more than a second, without importing anything or returning errors.
"Only after running the Advanced Rebuild option on Office v.X (on a different Mac), the database can be imported into 2008. Note that the Advanced Rebuild option does destroy any links between messages in different (imap or pop) boxes, which is in some cases inconvenient."
Duplicate Directory Service entries Users are also reporting an issue in which Directory Service entires are duplicated with Exchange accounts. One reader writes:
"Deleting the Exchange account does delete one Directory Service entry, but the other remains. That one is not functioning anyway (out of memory error). But most irritating: it can't be deleted from the account menu at all; Entourage 2008 saying that the corresponding Exchange account should be deleted, which doesn't exist. Even renaming it doesn't help."
Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.
Previous coverage:
- Office 2008: More crashes, network-save issues, font distortion
- Office 2008: Serious ownership, font problems
- Office 2008 crashes and fixes; Spaces incompatibility
- Office 2008: Word crashes; deletes old Office; no full exchange support
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