Troubleshooting Microsoft Office Word 98

Word 98 and Global Village fax conflict? John Peak reports problems faxing from Word 98 using a Global Village TelePort 33.6 SpeakerPhone modem. "In particular, holding down the Option key and selecting Fax from the File menu freezes the system. Likewise, choosing Fax in the Chooser and then trying to fax from Word 98 freezes the system." The problem remained even after turning off all extensions except those needed for the two programs to function. Microsoft Tech Support confirmed that they have been receiving reports of similar problems with other fax software and modems (we previously reported on a similar problem with FaxSTF), but this was the first report of a problem with Global Village software. As with FaxSTF, this is clearly not a problem that affects all users (and we are not sure yet why this is).

Conflict with DragAnyWindow Bob Lougheed writes: "I just installed Office 98 on a PowerCenter Pro 210 running OS 8.1 with DragAnyWindow version 4.2.1. When the Solid Drag option is selected, all of Word's drop-down menus and dialog boxes become invisible or blank. I managed to save my file and exit by guessing at what the dialog boxes were probably saying. When I turned off the Solid Drag option things worked again."

Note DragAnyWindow 4.3 is now out. I am not sure if this addresses this problem.

Update The "Windows that won't redraw" file that comes with DragAnyWindow states: "Some applications don't redraw the contents of their windows when you release the mouse button after using DragAnyWindow to move a dialog. This is not DragAnyWindow's fault: the Macintosh system software doesn't handle window updates behind dialogs automatically, so it is up to the application to take care of it." Perhaps this is the source of the problem.

Appearance Extension problem? Josh Rafofsky and Scott Rose claim that Word 98 has the same Appearance bug that we previously described for Mathematica. "Namely, words on the screen sometimes become irregularly spaced, squished together, and unreadable. This is more noticeable in some fonts than others, and is more noticeable when words are bolded and underlined than when they are just plain text." It turns out that the same Wolfram Research Appearance Patch that fixed the problem with Mathematica, fixes the problem with Word as well. [If you are using Appearance Extension 1.0.2, use this patch instead.]