Word 2008 is crap

[richard.mac]

i mostly use Pages but i have to use Word as the paper in my group assignment is written in a font that Pages doesnt have.

so i was just using Word then switched to Safari for a while then back to Word and it froze. i immediately right clicked on its dock icon and it said it was not responding so i chose to force quit… but now it wont quit!

i tried force quitting it from the Force Quit window and from Activity Monitor but no luck and when i double click on it again in the Apps folder it says "error -600".

how do i quit Word? i dont want to reboot or log out as i have stuff running in Fusion and i dont want to shut it down.

 

[realhash]

In Activity Monitor search for Word's Process ID (PID).
Run Terminal and type kill -9 ###
replacing ### with Word's PID.

You can find PID also by typing top in Terminal. To quit top simply press q

 

[richard.mac]

In Activity Monitor search for Word's Process ID (PID).
Run Terminal and type kill -9 ###
replacing ### with Word's PID.

You can find PID also by typing top in Terminal. To quit top simply press q

After i force quit Word in Activity monitor the process quit but the app continued to be open in the dock.

i ended up finishing my session in Fusion and then tried to log out but it didnt work. had to force shutdown then i fsck'd in single user mode and it found a few errors.

Word 2008 is absolute crap. i might end up using office 2003 in Fusion at this rate. it will probably be faster too.

 

[xUKHCx]

I have found that Word may become unresponsive if you leave it for a little while however selecting it and leaving the beachball running for a little while 20-30 seconds the application becomes active again. Perhaps a little too hasty with trying to quit it?

It is rubbish though.

 

[richard.mac]

I have found that Word may become unresponsive if you leave it for a little while however selecting it and leaving the beachball running for a little while 20-30 seconds the application becomes active again. Perhaps a little too hasty with trying to quit it?

It is rubbish though.

i had it open for about a minute and switched to Safari to look at referencing examples then i went back at it then became unresponsive.

i let it beachball for about 5 mins but still no go. i tried to force quit and the document closed and so did its process in Activity Monitor but the app stayed in the dock.

other apps continued to stay responsive but you couldnt open any other apps. they just bounced in the dock forever. the only way to stop this nonsense was to force shutdown.

ive never had this problem with Leopard and dont use Word that much (mainly use Excel) so im blaiming Word.

 

[telecomm]

How could there be a font available to Word that "Pages doesn't have"?

 

[richard.mac]

^ when i open the .doc in Pages it says "Some warnings occurred" and when i click review this window opens.



thats the font that my group wants to use. the font shows fine in Word but not in Pages.

but the weird thing is even though the font shows properly and i can edit it in Word, the font is not listed in the font drop down menu? does anyone have Palatino Linotype in Word 2008?

 

[telecomm]

Palatino should be available to all apps, and is trademarked by Linotype. You will have "Palatino" in your /Library/Fonts folder. I suspect the problem is just that Pages isn't finding an exact match for the way that font in named, and is probably making a substitution (likely you're just getting Palatino).

Does the type look any different in Pages vs Word? Sometimes a Word document that uses a non-standard font will still show that font's name, but a substitution will be made in the displayed version. I suspect Word is just showing the original font name, and then making a substitution (again, probably for Palatino) when it's displayed.

Bottom line, it shouldn't cause any problems if you just work in Palatino in Pages.

 

[richard.mac]

i just searched for Palatino in /Library/Fonts, Font Book and in Finder's search with "System files - include" and its not there. i definately dont have it. should i have it after installing iWork '08 then Office 2008?

Word is showing Palatino fine even though its not in its font list and Pages just uses Lucida Grande.… weird!

i guess i will just have to use Lucida Grande in Pages then change it back when i go to Uni. they all want to use Palatino for our poster , but i think Lucida is better

 

[telecomm]

Hmmm... I wonder where mine came from! The only other app I've got that might have installed fonts would be Acrobat Pro, but this font lists the copyright as being from Apple. Here's the info I've got from Font Book.

All this trouble just to avoid Word... can't say I blame you!

 

[Saladinos]

Agree that Word is rubbish on the Mac. The interface is horrible and very difficult to use well. For example, the whole interface changes when going in to notebook view, and you can't insert objects (such as equations) straight from it. You have to switch to the standard view, insert the object, then switch back. And you can't add any of the normal toolbars to that view for some reason. Oh, and the equations go all blurry if you save them and load the document again.

I would uninstall Office 2008 in an instant if Pages supported equations. As an engineering student, it's sort of critical to what I do.

 

[telecomm]

Agree that Word is rubbish on the Mac. The interface is horrible and very difficult to use well. For example, the whole interface changes when going in to notebook view, and you can't insert objects (such as equations) straight from it.

I just noticed that the other day, sort of a pain.

Oh, and the equations go all blurry if you save them and load the document again.

That was fixed in the last update.

 

[richard.mac]

what if someone attaches the Palatino font will that work?

if not i will just use Pages with Lucida Grande just in case Word decides to crap out again and i lose my work.

anyway im heading out now. thanks guys see ya.

 

[migulic]

I have Palatino and I don't even have Office (I did have the Office 2004 Test Drive which came with my Mac though).

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

I would uninstall Office 2008 in an instant if Pages supported equations. As an engineering student, it's sort of critical to what I do.

I make equations in Grapher (comes with Mac OS X... it's in Applications => Utilities by default,) and then copy and paste those over to Pages.

...

the only thing I have Office for (actually, only Office 2004, I saw no need for 2008,) is Excel... because Numbers is way sub-par when it comes to changing data into graphs.

 

[telecomm]

I make equations in Grapher (comes with Mac OS X... it's in Applications => Utilities by default,) and then copy and paste those over to Pages.

Unfortunately that's only a partial solution. Font matching becomes a problem, so does alignment with text if your equation is inline, and you also have to worry about text wrapping (since the equation is a PDF image that's been dropped into the document).

LaTeXiT isn't a great solution either, for exactly the same reasons.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

And the Equation Editor from Microsoft does a better job than Grapher? I never compared them side by side but it seemed like they were pretty much the same thing. (Except I hate M$ and so avoid using their products whenever possible...)

 

[telecomm]

And the Equation Editor from Microsoft does a better job than Grapher?

Yes, it does. Equations are aligned correctly when inline, and fonts are adjusted properly.

[PS: Sorry OP, we've gotten a little off topic!]