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TICKET ARCHIVE -> MS Excel 2004 Spreadsheet freeze

drgthang - Apr 14, 2006 - 12:43 pm

Hi,

We have a shared work spreadsheet created on one employees' desktop. Other employees can use this file from our work server. When someone elese tries to delete columns from the spreadsheet, they get the spinning beachball and then a "MS Excel Not responding" message on "Force Quit". This has occurred on 2 seperate computers. Is this a document corruption issue? The file permissions are fine, so that shouldnt be a problem. We are running Office 2004 on Tiger OS X 10.4.5.

Thanks,
Matt

markhowson999 - Apr 14, 2006 - 3:12 pm

Firstly, and completely unrelated to your problem, a new version of Tiger (10.4.6) is avaliable from Apple. The updates are:

- login and authentication in a variety of network environments
- file access and byte range locking with AFP file sharing
- network access when using proxy server automatic configuration files
- connecting to Cisco VPN servers using IP/Sec
- using Bluetooth wireless devices
- searching iWork and Microsoft Office documents with Spotlight
- saving Word documents automatically when using a network home directory
- creating Automator workflows for iPhoto 6
- synchronizing contacts and calendars to .Mac and mobile phones
- mounting and unmounting iDisk volumes
- compatibility with third party applications and devices
- previous standalone security updates

To install go to APPLE > Software Update... on your menu.

This could solve your problem.

If this doesn't work, go to www.neooffice.org and download their office suite for PowerPC (it's free) does the file open in there?

drgthang - Apr 14, 2006 - 4:01 pm

Hi, I should be more specific. We do have 10.4.6 running at the office. The person who created the Excel sheet, uses a new Intel-processor powerbook. The person who was trying to edit it, was using a non-Intel processor laptop.

Her computer is also creating trash from Office documents whenever she restarts her computer (the trash can is empty before she restarts, then is full of long titled items after a restart) Is there an issue going on between the new Intel powerbook's files created in Office? Or is there something I should be checking on the non-Intel computers MS Office?

My other thought is to do a disk permissions verify/repair on the creator's computer, if that document is causing problems.

Im assuming Officesuite for PowerPC is something that runs on Intel-based and not the older MACs?

markhowson999 - Apr 14, 2006 - 4:04 pm

Sorry, can't help you on that, I'll reopen the ticket

Thanks,
Mark

ishan - Apr 15, 2006 - 4:41 am

Microsoft Office runs using Rosetta on Intel-based MacBook Pros and iMacs, but I've had no problems at all with using files created on an Intel iMac and opening them with Excel on a PPC PowerMac. I suspect one or more of the files on your install or preferences (or other zillion files Microsoft Office scatters throughout your drive) is damaged. After making a backup of everything irreplaceable, I would remove Office using the "Remove Office" utility from Microsoft, reinstall it and run the Autoupdate to bring it up to the latest version (or you can go to mactopia.com and download and run the updater).

NeoOffice is great, but why complicate life at this point? It does not fully support all the features of Excel, and I wouldn't add another variable to your problem-solving algorithm.

HTH and please let us know what happens. Thanks.

drgthang - Apr 27, 2006 - 5:01 pm

Thanks for your response. We did a removal of 2004 and reinstall. Still getting issues on Office 2004 in the Tiger environment on that laptop. Recently Excel crashed while working on a Excel spreadsheet from our work server. Also, the person's Entourage Identity seemed to vanish. In addition, there are strange files being created in the trash. Any thoughts? Is Office just problematic under Tiger?

ishan - Apr 28, 2006 - 2:16 am

Are you running any "haxies" or other Office addon programs from third party developers? That'd be the only other variable I can think of. If you boot up the user's computer in "Safe" mode, (with the shift key held down), do the problems still occur? Safe mode will disable all login items, among other things.