Microsoft Error "Reporting" hangs EVERYTHING daily!

[Uncle Ug]

Help! I think the folks in Redmond have found a way to make my iMac G5 as "reliable" as a PC! I recently installed Leopard. Now, when I try to print a file from Word or Excel, after the file is sent to the printer, I get a typical Microsoft message: "Word (or Excel) has encountered a problem....blah, blah blah". Then, regardless of which choice I make (to report the error, or not, etc.) it hangs and I get the rotating colorwheel of death. I am stuck in "Microsoft Error Reporting", according to the application title adjacent to my Apple logo . Nothing, but nothing, frees me until I kill the power. There's gotta be a better way...

 

[nadyne]

Which version of Office are you using?

Does it happen on every document you try to print?

Can you print from other applications without a problem?

Regards,
Nadyne.

 

[Uncle Ug]

Detective Work...

Nadyne,

Thanks for your prompt reply.

Word is version 11.0 (2004), as is Excel. Just did a test in Power Point that printed fine. In Word, it has happened on multiple documents. Same with Excel. Just printed one of the Excel documents that was hanging the application before. Printed fine. Just printed one of the Word documents that was hanging the application before. Of course, it printed fine too. Applications seem to know when they're being talked about and then mysteriously behave well.

Interesting side note, at my office at Disney, where I had to work on a PC, whenever Word or Excel would hang (not daily, but more than weekly) and the Microsoft Error Reporting window came up, trying to report the error would ALWAYS hang everything. The cynical guys in IT said it was no accident that one could never successfully report an incident--so we were advised to never try.

Sorry for any sarcasm regarding Windows, but I have suffered through too many years of being a beta...er, uh, typical user of Windows non-operating systems.

 

[nadyne]

Word is version 11.0 (2004), as is Excel. Just did a test in Power Point that printed fine. In Word, it has happened on multiple documents. Same with Excel. Just printed one of the Excel documents that was hanging the application before. Printed fine. Just printed one of the Word documents that was hanging the application before. Of course, it printed fine too. Applications seem to know when they're being talked about and then mysteriously behave well.

You are completely right! I have no idea what our developers put in the code, but somehow you go to show or talk to someone else the problem and it never recurs until a couple of days later. If it makes you feel any better, this happens to me, too.

If you're really only on 11.0.0, the first thing that you need to do is update. Office 2004 is currently at 11.5.5. 11.5.5 was released in June, so if you're still at 11.0.0, you're missing more than five years of updates! To update, go to the Help menu in any application and select "check for updates". I would give you download links for the updates, but I have to admit that I'm not sure off the top of my head what the exact update sequence you'll need to use. "Check for updates" will walk you through the updates in the right order, so keep on repeating that until Word shows that you're at 11.5.5.

After you're all updated, try to print again, and report back on whether you're successful.

Regards,
Nadyne.