Let me begin by saying I really like Microsoft Word v.X. It has the features I need, it works the way it's supposed to work, and it's been almost perfectly reliable for the past couple of years. I've said it many times and I'll probably say it many more: Word v.X may be the best word processor I have ever used, and Microsoft's Mac Business Unit builds damn fine software when you consider that the father of Windows signs their paychecks.
Office v.X may be out of production but it is still the gold standard to me. It took an update or two from Microsoft, but for the past year or two Word and the other Office v.X apps have worked like a champ for me and rarely caused me grief.
I wish I could say the same for the new release, Office Mac 2004, but I am afraid I can't. After using it (mostly Word, with a little Excel and Entourage thrown in for variety) for a month and it looks like it was released before its time.
I find myself using Office Mac 2004 less and less, and only when working on unimportant projects. And that's being charitable -- I am sorely tempted to delete the whole Office 2004 suite until an update arrives, at which time I'll gladly give it another shot and see if they got it right yet. But the bottom line for me is that when there's money on the line, I can't trust the new versions.
What, exactly, is wrong with Office Mac 2004? I don't know that it's any single issue. It's more that I feel it was rushed out before it was finished with more than a few rough edges, which doesn't inspire much confidence.
Among my specific complaints are issues that include Excel freezing when I try to save a very simple spreadsheet created with an older version of Excel.
Here's how it goes: First I choose Save As…
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Then the beachball of death appears...
The dastardly beachball remains on my screen until either:
1. I force Excel to quit...
or…
2. Excel forces itself to quit...
At least it's polite about it and apologizes for the inconvenience, but still, incidents like this don't inspire confidence. I mean, this spreadsheet is tiny with only a few dozen cells and a couple of very simple macros. I am afraid to even try saving some of my bigger and more complicated sheets with Excel Mac 2004.
Word Mac 2004 doesn't seem to have a freezing-crashing gremlin like the one I discovered in Excel but it has several maddening traits. For example, what's wrong with this picture:Insert RantandRaveFig2101.tiff
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If you haven't figured it out yet, it's that the document's title bar is underneath the menu bar, making it impossible to move the document window. I could understand (but probably not excuse) this behavior if the document had been created on another Mac with a larger monitor, or on a PC. But this document was created with Word Mac 2004, which ought to be able to remember window positions of documents it creates. I mean, the previous version has never done this to me…
While this one is easily remedied by choosing Zoom from the Windows menu, once again, this type of behavior doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
Here's another one that I find annoying: Word 2004 has a new toolbar called the Adobe Acrobat PDFMaker:
That's all well and good, and I guess it's useful, but it seems there is no way you can banish it permanently. I've tried it all: Clicking its red gumdrop; using the View-->Toolbars menu item; unchecking it in the Customize Toolbars and Menus dialog box; and moving it to the nether regions of my second monitor. No matter what I do, it comes back like a bad penny every time I launch Word Mac 2004.
It would be less irritating if it didn't also move my document down on screen by about 1/2 inch, but it does that every time as well.
(Click the thumbnail for a full-size image)
In all fairness, most of my complaints aren't data-destroyers or hard-crashers, but taken as a whole they have shaken my faith in Office Mac 2004 to the point where I have gone back to Word v.X for most of my work.
I am waiting with baited breath for that update, which I expect soon. I'll be happy to give Office Mac 2004 another chance then, but until that time I'll be using Office v.X, a suite of excellent programs that still works flawlessly.
…and that's all he wrote.
Bob "Dr. Mac" LeVitus has been a Macintosh user for a long, long time and has written 49 computer books including Mac OS X Tiger For Dummies and GarageBand for Dummies. He also offers expert technical help and training to Mac users, in real time and at reasonable prices, via telephone, e-mail, and/or unique Internet-enabled remote control software. For more information on Bob and his services, visit www.boblevitus.com.
The Adobe Acrobat PDFMaker software is graciously installed (into both Office v.X and Office 2004) without your permission by Adobe Reader (version 6.0).
You can remove it (from Office 2004) by deleting the following files:
Hey Bob. I actually experienced that same behaviour with Word v.X : title bar stuck under the tool bars. This anoyed me until I noticed Word windows appearing correctly in another user account on the same machine. I never got around to customizing settings in my Word preferences, so I grabed a copy of the preference file from the other users account. Can't remember which one it was; Office seems to have all sorts of preferences and other such files, in all sorts of places, coming out it's ears. Whichever one it was it cured the disappearing title bar act. Looks like some sort of skew-iff preference file thing.
Funnily enough there was a version of Apple Works 6 that did not like me making large ,bold text in some of the cells in spreadsheets. AW would keep quiting. The next update of AW solved the problem.
I have the same window position problem and Acrobat tool bar persistance with Word v.X. Maybe there are some deeply buried preferences somewhere to fix these problems, but one thing the Mac Business unit seem to inherit from the parent company are bewildering twisted and seemingly haphazard preference pane tree structures.
Some of us have to use word. Some of us have to deal with clients who only use word. some of us need the feature set of office. Some of us want to use macs and still have to be able to deal with office/word users so we can earn a living. If there was no Mac office, i would have to buy a PC. Simple Text and Apple Works are all well and good, but they don't help me out one bit. So lighten up on Bob. Seriously. Macs rule and everything else, but try to at least make a nod to reality every now and then.
I've actually found v.2004 to be a bit more stable than v.X, especially in the printing arena.
As an example, I have a company-provided word document form that is protected. If I try to print it in v.X, the top and bottom are cut off of the form when it is protected. Unprotect the form and printing is fine. v.2004 does not do this. Minor, but really annoying. I also like the scrapbook feature built in. Comes in very handy.
I'm not sure you can blame the Acrobat toolbar problem on Microsoft. Acrobat did this with v.X as well 2004, and it seems to be an Adobe problem not a Microsoft problem. The only option seems to be disabling Acrobat in Word (which isn't that big a deal; you can still print to the Adobe Acrobat printer).
More generally (and I don't consider mself a Microsoft apologist), I've found Word 2004 (and Entourage; I don't use Excel and haven't played with PowerPoint much yet) to be more stable and reliable than v.X. In fact, my thoughts on 2004 where very much your thoughts on v.X: this is the best version of Word I've used in a long time.
Agreed. I tried replicating Bob's issues and couldn't see the problems.
Bob, perhaps there's something else at play?
One issue I did find, however, was that sending a Word Notebok file as an email attaches the audio file as well. Hmmm, 3.5Mb for a one-page doc? Don't think so, and there seems to be no preference setting for not sending the audio attachment. Back to cut and paste.
Rushed out? An element of truth in that but I'm not too sure any apps these days are sent to market when they're ready. It seems to me that developers are happier to get the box on the shelf to generate revenue and see which of the squeakiest wheels should get the oil first.
Sad to say, but that seems par for the course, regardless of the publisher.
I use Excel everyday and it never freezes.
And your toolbar problem is more of Adobe problem then Microsoft.
You can delete it if you check your preferances folder.
of problems. I've experienced "unexpected" quits with increasing frequency with the latest version of Word X. And, annoyingly, accepting the recovered document and trying to save Word refuses to save with the same name, requiring more disk space as it's saved with a different name, and a trip back to the Finder to erase the first one, so that I don't get confused down the road. Word crashes seem to be related to multi-lingual documents with words selected and made bold or italic. Annoying. (from philr at the dot mac mail address)
stuff comes back... every time you launch.. because to save your settings you have to do it in a stupid way... hah, and I can't remember where it was... the chick I live with set up the font to be something fruity and purple, and every new document came up that way.. until I figured out how to save preferences.
not intuitive at all
has been this way since v.x nothing office 2004 specific
anyway.. umm. too bored to try and figure out how, again.
The Acrobat toolbar is an Adobe problem, not a Micro$oft problem. The fix is documented in various places on the internet. The solution below comes from MacOS hints:
Remove Acrobat toolbar from Office v.X applications
Fri, Nov 28 '03 at 10:19AM • from: Steve Martyr
After installing Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Professional, it automatically placed an Acrobat PDF toolbar within Word and Excel. This toolbar would be placed on its own, which became an eyesore. Trying to close out of it, or going to Views -> Toolbars -> Delete would only remove it until the program next started.
There is a fix for this, thankfully. Go to: /Applications -> Microsoft Office X -> Office -> Startup. Within that folder, go into Excel and remove PDFMaker.xla. Back up one leve, then go into the Word folder and remove PDFMaker.dot. Problem solved.
MS (v.X and 2004): Office: Startup: Word (or Excel, or PowerPoint)
and your Acrobat toolbars will be wished away. Adobe's fault, by the way. I've never encountered the problems you have, Bob. Perhaps its your über-geek (read: more trouble installing and configuring than they're worth time and money) add-ons and utilities that are simply breaking the OS?
Thanks to all for your input and particularly how to get rid of that annoying PDF toolbar, which I'll do as soon as I post this note.
As for the way to make preferences stick (Guest), the solution is usually to save the changes to the Normal template. But it doesn't work for the title bar under the menu bar issue, which only happens after a document has been named and saved.
Also, for what it's worth, I HAVE to use Word. No other program handles revisions well and it is the format every book and magazine publisher I work with requires. Don't get me wrong... I like Word and I'm not afraid to say so. But with all the strange stuff that happened with Word & Excel, I just can't trust Office 2004 as much as v.X. Yet.
I hope they come out with a killer update soon so I can use Word 04 without worrying about it so much. Until then, Word v.X is working just fine.
_________________
Bob "Dr. Mac" LeVitus
Author/Trainer/Consultant/Mac Geek
I have 4 monitors. Whenever I have Excel or Word open and change the resolution, they crash. This has been happening since v.X, and yes, I do report every time.
Another bug in 2004 with Entourage, the keyboard shortcut for paste as quotation doesn't work (no pasting occurs).
There are other little things that I can't recall, but I agree, it does "feel" a little rushed.
I've stopped using Office for just about everything (I use Excel to create word lists in alphabetical order, then I paste them into TeXShop).
I'm a professional ESL textbook writer and have found LaTeX to be less of a headache than Office. When you throw in the fact that you can create beautiful music books via Lilypond (http://www.lilypond.org/) and LaTeX, musicians like me (and you, Bob) have even less reason to pay a twice-yearly tribute to the MS cash cow.
It was like watching a report of the porblems I've been experiencing the last 4 mos. excel crashing, adobe pdf crap and the windows opening behind the menu bar. Funny enough for some stupid reason about 4 mos. ago I installed a new version of acrobat reader... coincidence????? I beginning not to think so.
Until that point it worked flawlessly and I enjoyed it as much as Bob still enjoys his v.X.
I am thankful that some have posted hopeful looking solutions to the pdf problem, but what about that window appearing behind the menu bar and excel crashing. I would be very thankful for a list of prefs and other crap I could dump and start over fresh from. Otherwise it's looking like I'm going to be giving my iBook a major overhaul .... again.
In Office X with Acrobat Standard X installed I was able to regain that ca. 1 cm space by putting the Acrobat oriented mini tool bar at the front of the bottom of three highly customized toolbars I have created for my convenience.
I've not installed Office 2004 yet, while waiting for the traditional MS Office patches and updates to be released.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Harry {doc} Babad
2540 Cordoba Court
Richland, WA 99352-1609
Voice: 509/375-0328
Thanks for the review of the new version of Office. My wife got on the beta-preview program and I tried it on her Aluminum Powerbook. My experience with just the speed of the new suite was so bad that I stopped with it after just a few minutes. I never got to the point where I ran into any of these issues because it was just so damn slow on a 1.33 GHz G4 that I never bothered. Thanks for pointing out these issues… in addition to them, Office 2004 is SLOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW...
The unbanishable PDF toolbar isn't just in Mac Office 2004. I use (due to no fault of my own) the Winduhs version (Office XP) at my workplace, and the same annoying trait exists. Must be shared code between the Winduhs and Mac versions.
Off the point: You meant "bated" breath (bated = lessened, abated) rather than "baited" (baited = you eat worms).
As mentioned above by several people you can get rid of this stuff! Applications/Microsoft Office/Office/Startup/ and then remove the pdf file in all the enclosed folders.
Hopefully this will stop excel from crashing too!
I've been using 2004 for a while now and it feel faster, is definitely more stable, and works better with Office XP. Its not perfect and its got its flaws (like in Entourage being able to tell it to open an attachment if I haven't downloaded the entire message), but it is THE best office suite on OSX right now par none. AppleWorks should be quietly abandoned in favor of building an Aqua native version of Open Office, but we all know that APple isn't planning to do that... yet
Migrating from Office 2001 (running under classic) to Office X was a test of my patince but Office X is positively nippy compared to Office 2004.
I agree that this version is very unstable and also look forward to that first update in much the same way as I did with Office X. Sometimes its easy to forget that Word X (pre 10.1.4) was the most unstable application on my computer.
I think that Microsoft are doing a solid job with Office and I hope that they continue but I still can't help wondering why Apple is not doing more with AppleWorks. This program's basic feature set hasn't progressed much since ClarisWorks v2.1. At the very least the database module is screaming out for some decent functionality.
Am I looking at the picture wrong, or is that the old beachball that looks more like a CD than a beachball? Wasn't that changed in 10.2? Maybe part of the problems experienced have to do with an old OS, though I doubt Dr. Mac would be using such an old version. Or am I missing something here?
Word-04 is much faster than X when deleting an entire word. Under X, it would be at least 1 second delay on my TiBook 667. Now, almost instant.
Some keyboard shortcuts were changed and this is not really told to you up front. For example, cmd + shift + C used to be "copy formatting", now it is "copy to scrapbook". Similar for cmd + shift + V.
I know I can fix that one...
Is it just me, or does command + right/left arrow now move to the end of line instead of just the next word which is still standard in other parts of office (Entourage).
I have a new issue about paste drawing from powerpoint to word as a picture. Originally, office X can paste as picture perfecly. However, the text of drawing created at powerpoint became pixelated when pasted as a picture to word. Does anyone know how to solve this problem. Thank you.
For those who share a true hatred of the PDF maker two-buttom menu that will simply never move and never go away, here is a ready solution:
The PDF maker menu launches from the following location
Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office/Startup/<office app>/
So, to get rid of the PDF maker menu from Word, delete the 'PDFmaker' file found at Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office/Startup/Word/
and so on for Excel and Powerpoint.
One thing to be aware of is that Acrobat automatically performs a system check when it launches, and will try and repair these 'missing' files once you have deleted them. Thankfully, the nicve people at Adobe have provided a 'do not ask again' option, so just say no thanks to the repairs, and turn the warning off.
Has anyone else noticed the significant drop in suicide rates now that we can finally get rid of that ******* little PDF maker thing off our word toolbars?
Many thanks for the info.! I'm a free man again!!!
Looks like a corrupted Word Setting (10) file.
Quit word. In finder go to
Hard Disk:Users:Your Username: Library:Preferences:Microsoft
Trash the Word Settings (10) file
Reopen Word and all will be groovy
roysanau
I believe that, in addition to removing the PDFMaker startup files in the Office directories, you also need to prevent Acrobat from "self-healing" these files right back in, by editing every file in /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Acrobat/.
Open these files with a text editor, search for "PDFMaker" in them, and make sure that every "YES" string two lines above is changed to "NO", eg:
<key>install</key>
<string>YES</string>
<key>type</key>
<string>PDFMaker</string>
-- that YES should be changed to NO.
(FYI, you'll find that most of the strings are already set to "NO", but there are at least a couple of default "YES"es that need to be changed.)
If you want to banish the PDF maker toolbar to parts unknown so that it doesn't open every time you open Word and move your document 1/2" down just to display 2 buttons, then do the following.
Open Applications->Microsoft Office 2004->Office->Startup->Word and drag the file PDFMaker.dot out of this folder. If you want the use of this later I recommend moving it 1 folder back. If you hate it and want it to go away, bank it off the dock into the trash.
Enjoy
As pointed out by an earlier post, the first step is to delete the following files:
PDMaker.dot (MS Word)
PDFMaker.xla (Excel)
PDFMaker.ppa (Power Point)
But, they will "come back to life" eventually, UNLESS you replace them with FOLDERS that have the exact same names. i.e. move these three things out of the folders they're found in, then create a new folder in each place with the same name (PDFMaker.___) as the removed file. That stymies the "self-healing" because a folder can't be replaced by a file.
My problem is that although it is now easy to prevent the PDFMaker toolbar from appearing every time I start Word, I am no longer able to use its features. I had customized my standard toolbar to include the create PDF file button, but it doesn't work now, so I have removed it.
Is there *still* no way to have this idiot PDFMaker operate properly, so we can use the feature and customize the standard toolbar without having to have the two button toolbar of infamy?
<i>You can remove it (from Office 2004) by deleting the following files:
.
.
.
</i>
My god... thank you!! Now why would Adobe make such an annoying feature? You can't even turn the damn thing off by unchecking or even deleting the damn thing from within MS Office.... Damn you, Adobe.
Thank you all for all the tips on making the toolbar go the hell away! (What worked for me was to remove the PDFMaker.xxx files from the Applications/Office/Startup/Word and /Excel and /Powerpoint directories, replacing them with empty folders of the corresponding names.)
My problem's similar to the hidden title bar one, except the problem's at the bottom of the screen. When I hit "open" in Word 2004 (v.11.2), the resulting window is so big that it drops off the bottom of the screen. My cursor can't reach the resize box at the bottom right, so I can't resize the window. I can't close/resize the window using the red-yellow-green buttons at top left -- only the green (+) one is active. I can just barely reach the top of the "cancel" button.
I've never used a bigger screen display (mine's a new 17" iMac G5) and can't figure out why the open window resized itself. Any suggestions appreciated!! (Trashing Word preferences didn't fix it.)
Why Microsoft Office Mac 2004 Scares Me
