Need help with office after switching from PC to Mac

[uv23]

Hi everyone. I just bought a 12" PowerBook. Love it (except for the hot palmrests) but after loading up a large document that I've been working on with a PC, there are some problems. The most annoying problem is that the normal/header formatting seems to have got a bit skewed, as there's a ton of stuff showing up in the document map when it shouldn't be (i.e. when I select "show heading 1" I also get a bunch of "normal" text.) So I've had to go through and select blocks of text and redesignate them a "normal." Tedious, but solvable.

My real problem is that my subscript characters were lost (little 1, 2, 3, etc...). I was surprised as I assumed Macs wee better for typography than PCs. And when I go into "insert symbol" I don't see any superscript chars. What am I missing?

Thanks much. :)

[kuyu]

i too had some trouble while adjusting to office X. However, in time you'll find it superior in most respects.

to do subscripts. Type in the number as usual. Next, highlight it, right click it or push apple-D. click on font in the popup menu, then selct the box that says subscript. That's it. They will appear a bit hard to read on your screen, but will print out just fine. Gook luck.

[uv23]

Haha ok that was easy. :) Thanks very much. I have formatting in the toolbar rather than a floatin palette (space considrations) and didn't see the option there so I just clicked on the Font menu then selected superscript and voila. I imagine I'll find a quick way of doing it eentually.I'm still in newbie mode. Scrolling through the document is a bit slow so far but I'm hoping when I upgrade from 256mb to 768mb next week it'll speed things along. Cheers.

[uv23]

Ok now I am honestly and truly annoyed. I spent a few hours reformatting my document so that all of the areas that showed up erroneously in the document map reverted back to "normal." Lo and behold, I had a beautiful document map that only showed whichever header level I asked for. Then I came back to Word aftar having closed it, open my document, and I see "Word is formatting document" and my document map is all cluttered and messed up again! ARGH! I'm working with huge documents so the document map is pretty key to getting around efficiently. Anyone have any ideas?

[Sweetfeld28]

did you save it after you fixed it? it sounds to me like you forgot to save, unless i missed something. Also, have you downloaded the latest update for your version of Office v.X? If you haven't just go to the Help Menu— Downloads and Updates. Maybe this will fix it if there is something wrong.

[uv23]

Umm yes I saved it. I'm not that much of a newbie. :) And yes, I did all of the officeupates. All in all, a very frustrating experience.

[Fukui]

Your using MS word right?
Its pretty buggy, at least without the updates that you can download.

I would recommend it if you hevent already done so.

MS Office patches (http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx?pid=download&location=/mac/DOWNLOAD/OFFICEX/OfficeX_1015.xml&secid=5&ssid=15&flgnosysreq=True)

As far as the slow scrolling problem.
MS office has a "background proccess" called MS Database Daemon.

It is located in the Office folder.
You'll have to close any office programs, and then check the "Activity Viewer" program in Utilties and kill it if its still active. Then delete the Daemon, and things should move along much faster.

That stupid deamon was sucking down my CPU at around 25-40% !!

[Fukui]

Originally posted by Yuval
Umm yes I saved it. I'm not that much of a newbie. :) And yes, I did all of the officeupates. All in all, a very frustrating experience.
Yea, I'm sorry to admit, but MS word does suck. You might, just might try saving as a different document (don't save over the one you have already) or disable fast saving.

Also, if you havent done already, if you use apples mail program, you should choose to send attachments as "Windows Friendly" because word saves them in a slightly different "non-standard" way....

Don't ask me what those 200+ "engineers" at the Mac Business Unit are doing all day, but I sure as he** know its not fixing bugs!!

[uv23]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I do have all the patches installed already. What exactly does "microsoft database dameon" do? I copied it into a temp folder then dragged the one in the office foler to the trash and Word does seem to scroll a bit faster. Am I risking anything by trashign it? (God I love not havign to go through uninstall procedures with OSX) :)

[Fukui]

Originally posted by Yuval
Thanks for the feedback guys. I do have all the patches installed already. What exactly does "microsoft database dameon" do? I copied it into a temp folder then dragged the one in the office foler to the trash and Word does seem to scroll a bit faster. Am I risking anything by trashign it? (God I love not havign to go through uninstall procedures with OSX) :)
It searches your LAN for other office installations. You could just use the firewall to block the scans, but that wouldn't fix the problem of CPU hogging. I've deleted it with no problems.
Why scanning TCIP addresses need 40% of my CPU I'll never understand...

[poisonmonkey]

Originally posted by Fukui
As far as the slow scrolling problem.
MS office has a "background proccess" called MS Database Daemon.

It is located in the Office folder.
You'll have to close any office programs, and then check the "Activity Viewer" program in Utilties and kill it if its still active. Then delete the Daemon, and things should move along much faster.

That stupid deamon was sucking down my CPU at around 25-40% !!

I can't find it under activity monitor or in the database and i know that i haven't deleted it...any thoughts?

[uv23]

Originally posted by poisonmonkey
I can't find it under activity monitor or in the database and i know that i haven't deleted it...any thoughts?
The progam is claled Microsoft Databae Daemon and youcan find it in Applications/Microsoft Office/Office/.

[Fukui]

Originally posted by poisonmonkey
I can't find it under activity monitor or in the database and i know that i haven't deleted it...any thoughts?
It starts up when you start word or excel.
You might try to check out top, using it from the terminal app. In activity monitor you have to choose to show all processes.

[poisonmonkey]

Thanks for the help Yuvan and Fukui!

Entourage stopped working when I removed it so I had to keep it...

[uv23]

Yeah I suspect it has other uses. Occasionally now, I get an error when I open a word doc that says something like "Cannot start Office X service" or something to that tune. I'll probably put it back.

[Fukui]

Yea, I haven't used entourage, so I didn't know that would happen.

Sorry...

[poisonmonkey]

No worries...

I use entourage for my hotmail stuff so its ok...

I guess someone will eventually find out the full purpose of that thing...

then maybe we can get a hack on it or something....

[Mord]

get open office

[uv23]

I am in the last third of a 3 year commercial project. Changing applications is not an option, too much risk. So far, the document map hasn't reset itself so hopefully whatever problem I was having is gone. And the scrolling slowness could be as much an issue with OSX's implementation of scroll wheels as anything. Right now, I'm happy and I'm sure it'll only get better when I do the ram upgrade. Cheers.

P.S. I love my PowerBook so much already that today I bought it a present: http://www.booqbags.com/Detail.bok?no=18 hopefully I'll have it by the end of the week. :)

[Mord]

whats the batterey life like on it?

[uv23]

Originally posted by Hector
whats the batterey life like on it?
Too early to say, as I just got it on Friday and it's been plugged in for the most part. I know Apple says 4.5 hours, but I'm expecting around 3.

[poisonmonkey]

Originally posted by Hector
whats the batterey life like on it?

battery life of my 12 PBwhen just typing gives me approx 3.5 hours with the screen at half bright...

when using iTunes and Safari at the same time I get closer to 1.5-2 hrs...

[Fukui]

Originally posted by Yuval
And the scrolling slowness could be as much an issue with OSX's implementation of scroll wheels as anything. Right now, I'm happy and I'm sure it'll only get better when I do the ram upgrade. Cheers.


Yea, AFAIK office doesn't take advantage of smooth scrolling....

[Falleron]

Originally posted by Yuval
Yeah I suspect it has other uses. Occasionally now, I get an error when I open a word doc that says something like "Cannot start Office X service" or something to that tune. I'll probably put it back.
I suggest you turn off some of the "helpful" auto formatting options. Then, when you open the document up again it wont edit it for you!! Plus, you will get better performance.