January 25, 2008 11:30 AM PST

Office 2008: More crashes, network-save issues, font distortion

by CNET staff

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[Friday, January 25th]

Crashes on application launch -- more fixes Users continue to experience an issue where Office 2008 applications crash as soon as they are launched. One of the latest reports:

"On a customers Mac, a fresh install of Word 2008 crashed all time during the splash screen. I did everything you suggested but that didn't help. And a new user with the Normal-file, preferences, Microsoft User Data folder and Application Support files from the old user worked fine."

Previously reported fixes including deletion of corrupt normal templates, corrupt .plists and more.

Now MacFixit reader Michael reports that removing the Microsoft AU Daemon from Startup Items can resolve the issue. Open System Preferences, then navigate to "Accounts" and click "Startup Items," then remove Microsoft AU Daemon.

Michael writes: "I deleted that (by clicking in the minus symbol), restarted and now Word runs fine."

Problems saving to network volumes -- workarounds Some users have reported problems saving files to network volumes from within Office 2008 applications:

One reader writes:

"Can't save files to network volume without an error. I mounted the volume and made a simple correction on a file then hit the save command -- no go. I thus am forced to save to the desktop, and then copy the file to the server."

Possible workarounds (from Microsoft) for this issue include:

"Remount the Network volume, and I suggest to use this work around till this problem is resolved
Disable Antivirus software, My advice is just don't use them or don't have them scan any disk location that you use regularly with office (think documents, preferences, applications folders here, possibly more)
Turn off spotlight for OS partition. Read/Write operations may be getting tangled by Spotlight especially when they are doing I/O over the wire to disk space located on the remote share. This may help."

Other workarounds we've noted for Office 2004 include using the "Open" function from the "File" menu in Word to access documents, rather than double-clicking the documents in the Finder to open them and more. Entourage rules forgotten, workaround As previously reported, Entourage 2008 ignores old rules carried over from Entourage 2004. There are two potential workarounds for this issue:

Open and close each rule, highlight all inbox messages, then choose Apply Rule > All Rules from the Message menu. [Thanks, Steve Harrison]
Access each individual rule as if you were going to edit it, and click OK (rather than cancel). That seems to "activate" the old rule. Then, "Apply all rules" [Thanks, Richard Bleicher]

How do you disable Office notifications? There appears to be no clear method for permanently disabling Office notifications in Office 2008. Chris Powell writes:

"In Office 2004 there was a clearly documented way to permanently disable Office Notifications, thereby getting rid of the annoying and unnecessary (for many people) Database Daemon.

"The instruction was 'Double-click the Office Notifications program, located in the Microsoft Office X/Office folder. On the Office Notifications menu, click Turn Off Office Notifications" [...] In Office 2008 that solution does not apply -- there is no such program. Like Office 2004, you can remove the Database Daemon from your "Accounts > Login Items" preference pane...but that doesn't matter, as it will reinsert itself as soon as you run Word or Excel again."

Font distortion continues Serious font problems can ensue after installation of Office 2008. In-house, various applications including Safari, Mail.app and others are plagued by distorted or "run-together" text after installation.

One reader writes:

"I too encountered the problem with font display faced by reader Daniel Crowley in Word 2008. I have had an '&' morphing into 'MO' (see picture). This is a big problem. Then the client on Windows complained that, while the document he had sent me for edits looked fine on screen, the formating was all but destroyed in the printed version."

"I reopened the file in Word 2004 (which I had not uninstalled, thank goodness). Saved again and sent back. The client was happy. All was back to normal for him. [For troubleshooting purposes, I had left the file in the compatible .doc format, and did not use not the newer .docx format. I'm also using the localized French version of Office 2008 on a localized French 10.5.1 System).]

Palm conduit no longer works It appears as though the conduit for syncing with Palm devices is broken under Entourage 2008.

One reader writes: