MS Office 2004 is being silly :(

[Sic]

whenever i try and open an office app, it gets stuck on "optimising font menu" and i have to reboot...imagine my annoyance!!!

does this mean that i have some dodgy fonts on my machine, that office doesnt like? if so, how can i identify these fonts and/or remove them?

TIA

 

[MisterMe]

Absent some additional evidence, the behavior that you describe sounds pretty normal to me. Welcome to Office 2004.

 

[zimv20]

whenever i try and open an office app, it gets stuck on "optimising font menu" and i have to reboot

i've seen that before, in 2003 iirc. her machine had a crapload of fonts and i used FontBook (in Applications) to disable a bunch.

it seemed the problem wasn't corrupted fonts, but that there were simply too many for Office to handle.

stupid MS.

 

[Les Kern]

whenever i try and open an office app, it gets stuck on "optimising font menu" and i have to reboot...imagine my annoyance!!!

does this mean that i have some dodgy fonts on my machine, that office doesnt like? if so, how can i identify these fonts and/or remove them?

TIA

Well you're a lucky man, as I solved this very issue a while back.
Throw away the following items: From the Office folder "Dofonts". Dump the fonts from the Fonts folder in the Office folder. (Not the folder itself) Now the biggie: Search for FONTCACHETOOL and delete it. (Forgot where it is exactly)
You know MS is big on bloatware, and insisted on including a font checker/seeder. If you have a font that it sees as "bad" (Mine was CourierNew) it will stall. You can always look for that one font and delete it, but I have about 1,000 of them.
The first time it starts it will take perhaps 15-20 seconds, then after that it's instantaneous.

 

[Sic]

thanks very much Les...i'll try that. i've got around 500 fonts on my machine too, and im not trawling those for one that im not even looking for!!!

i'll give it a go at lunch time and post my results back.

cheers for your advice

 

[Sic]

you're a star...worked perfectly

 

[Les Kern]

you're a star...worked perfectly

We're all in this together. This time it was me who suffered till a solution was found. The next MS nightmare is yours!

Incidently, I suggest this for ALL Office users. That's code that's just not needed at all.

later........

 

[Sic]

i completely agree...office starts instantaneously now!!

i wonder if you can do the same with photoshop and dreamweaver

....oh no, wait, they're actually good applications