Word Gone Wild

[dboh]

This is Word 2004; it's worked without problems for 5 years.

Today, while typing a document with a headline and a couple of paragraphs, I went back to change the font in the headline to bold. Selecting and highlighting the headline and clicking on the little "B" button turned the entire document bold; clicking in the headline and selecting "Centered Text" made all text in the document centered. I looked through Preferences and couldn't find any unusual settings.

I ran Preferential Treatment, which found no problems. I repaired permissions and found no problems. I deleted the installation and reinstalled, but the document did the same thing. I cut and pasted into a new document; it did the same thing. I retyped an entirely new document; same thing there too. I fscked. It found something about "illegal file name" and
 repaired it, but the document still exhibits the same strange behavior.

I have been using the editing functions for a book I'm editing, but didn't experience any problems. I just reopened one of the files I'd edited and was able to selectively bold.

Does anyone know what I can do to fix this? TIA

 

[pendragon]

As no one else has yet to respond, and if you’ll entertain a guess or two...

I. It sounds to me as though you may have somehow created a template and that this (new) template is now controlling your “standard/default” page setup. Whether your fresh reinstall of Word would have purged that--I dunno.

And so…

Go to:
1. Users/YourShortName/Library/ApplicationSupport/Microsoft/Office
2. Move the “User Templates” to your desktop.
3. Quit all µS applications and the relaunch Office/Word.

If the problem is gone you may trash the file on the desktop. If not, return it whence it came.

Note: If your old User Templates are purged you will then need to recreate new template settings.

II. What happens when you select the entire document and then change fonts? I’m wondering if it’s a font issue. If so, you might open Font Book, select all fonts and then from the File menu, Validate Fonts (corrupt/bad fonts can cause a myriad of weird problems).

HTH

[dboh]

Thanks for replying.

I tried a different font, but it did the same thing.

Also, I looked in all three library folders (two of them had Application Support) and there was no Microsoft folder. I also did a search for anything named "User Templates" and nothing came up.

[dboh]

I just tried creating a new document and tried just bolding the headline, and it did the same strange things. But I then hit command-Z (Undo), and the text went back to regular weight. Very strange. Just when I thought Word couldn't get more ponderous…

[pendragon]

This has worked for many, perhaps it will work for you too.

With no µS Office applications running, (turn off Entourage's Office Notifications, too)

Go to your Home Folder > Library > Preferences.

Delete the file com.microsoft.Word.plist. Then open the subfolder Microsoft, and delete each file with 'word' in its name.

Also delete the files:
• Carbon Registration Database
• Microsoft Component Preferences
• Microsoft Office Settings
• MS Office ACL
• Office Font Cache
• Office Registration Cache
• Office First Run
• Proofing Tool Preferences

Also copy the Custom Dictionary file to another location and then delete it from here.

Rename your Normal template to "old template" (do a Finder search to make sure no more "Normal" templates exist)--Word will create a new one.

Tip: Because so many preferences will need recreating, it may be wise to first take a screen shot of your preferences so that they may be easily reestablished.

Relaunch Word. Any better?

[dboh]

Thanks. I'll give it a try when I get past my current deadlines.

I was thinking that since I'd reinstalled the program, that I must have missed removing some little file somewhere (why doesn't Word have an uninstall???). I know I got everything named "Word" or "Microsoft" but I searched for "MS" too. All kinds of things showed up on that (things like "Rules" and "Conditions"), but I was afraid to remove any of it lest it mess up something else on my computer.

I don't have the full Office suite; just Word as a stand-alone app.

[Xairbusdriver]

Not a user, of course, but one would think that there was a place to choose/set the 'default' template.

[pendragon]

Sorry, I presumed you have the full suite. Another 'dragon error. Grrrrr.

Re the Uninstall capability, there is such a critter (in the suite version anyway) located in Applications/Microsoft Office/Additional Tools.

You might check to see if you too have such a beast (in a similar location). Perhaps even do a search on "remove".

But even if you have it, most have found that it does not do a 100% job of uninstalling. You should also/then do a search on Microsoft, Word, etc. and manually remove any found detritus.

Notes:
1. If you have the Remove tool, be sure you are not connected to a local network when using it. Otherwise it will seek out and remove those versions, or parts thereof, as well.
2. If you have the Remove tool, it should have an accompanying Read Me. Read it.

If all this fails, there are (at least) two sites that have forums just for Office/Word. A post there may pay handsome dividends:
1. MacFixIt/Office
2. GoogleGroups/Word

The Google site is staffed by MVPs (Microsoft Valuable Professionals) and most always brings success.

[dboh]

FWIW, the answer I got at MacFixit appears to have worked.

User>Documents>Microsoft User Data>Normal
Move it to desktop
Weird things stop happening!

I was told not only would this not have shown up when I searched for things to manually remove, but it wouldn't have been removed by the Word removal tool.

Thanks for all your suggestions!

[Xairbusdriver]

If those are the actual names of in the path, there's no reason they wouldn't be seen or found by any decent search tool. As you found, all those folders are easily readable in a Finder window, no 'tricks' required. Couldn't care less about MS 'remove' tool(s), but I would think that even Spotlight would search/index the user folder. Of course, one can hide certain areas from its searches/indexes. I've never used Spotlight enough to see any great benefit from it other than speed. When I search for something, I'm ore interested in success than speed in not finding something that I know is there.