CRASHES AND PERFORMANCE Speed Up Startup The Annoyance: Word for the Mac takes forever and a day to start up. The Fix: Check that you haven't got two copies of the application on your Mac. One possibility is that you've installed Word or Office twice, but what's more likely is that you've tried to create an alias to Word by  +Option-dragging and the Option key wasn't pressed far enough to register, so the Word executable has been copied instead. If you have two copies of Word, delete one of them. Word should then start at normal speed. If your Mac is old, or sick, that normal speed may still be glacial, but at least you won't be contributing to the problem.
Tip: You can save yourself a lot of time and grief by keeping Mac OS X and Word (or Office) updated to the latest versions available. Run Software Update (Apple  Software Update) regularly to check for Mac OS X patches and updates. To check for updates to Word 2004, choose Help Check for Updates and use Microsoft AutoUpdate. In Word X, choose Help Downloads and Updates and use the browser-based update mechanism.
The Fix: The intriguingly named CarbonLib is a Mac OS X system file that's needed for running some applications. This message means that CarbonLib is damaged, which can prevent you from running Word. Download the latest version from the Apple web site (http://www.apple.com/support/), install it, and then run Word again. Look to Your Font Files When Word X Quits on Startup The Annoyance: When I try to start Word X, it gets as far as the splash screen and then dies. The splash screen I could do without; Word itself I can't. The Fix: If you've been trying to guess what's causing this problem, stop now. Chances are, you haven't come up with a font filebut that's most likely what it is. A corrupted font file, a duplicate font file, or both together can cause Word to crash on startup. Tackling this problem can be a little tricky, because the guilty font can be located either in one of the Mac OS X fonts folders or in the Classic Fonts folder ( /System Folder/Fonts ) if you have System 9 installed. Proceed as follows : -
If there's an update to Word X that you haven't installed, install it immediately. See if that cures the problem. If not, carry on with the steps in this list. -
Switch to the Finder. Open a window to the Classic Fonts folder (in the /System Folder/Fonts folder on your hard disk). Next , open one window to the OS X shared fonts folder, ~/Library/Fonts , and another window to your fonts folder, ~/Users/<your_user_name>/Library/Fonts . Line up the three windows so that you can see the contents of each, and delete any duplicate font files. Once you're confident you've deleted all the ringers, restart Mac OS X and try launching Word. If Word starts, all is well. If not, go to Step 3. -
Still with me? That's a pity. Next, you must find out whether your Mac has a corrupted font menu cache. If your Mac has System 9 installed on it, restart in System 9, either by using Startup Disk (choose Apple System Preferences, click Startup Disk, choose the System 9 startup disk, click the Restart button, and confirm your choice) or by starting from the System 9 CD. In the Finder, open the /System Folder/Fonts folder and see if it contains any fonts. If it does, rename the folder OldFonts or another distinctive name . Reboot, and then try starting Word. If it starts okay, create a replacement Fonts folder, drag all the fonts from the OldFonts folder into it, and delete the OldFonts folder. Reboot again, and try starting Word. If Word crashes again, go to Step 4; otherwise , you're off the hook. -
Still in System 9, create a folder called TempFonts on your Desktop. Open the /System Folder/Fonts folder and drag all its contents to the TempFonts folder. Reboot into Mac OS X and try to start Word. If Word starts, one of your Classic fonts is causing the crash. To find the guilty party you'll need to restore the fonts from the TempFonts folder to the Fonts folder one by one, rebooting and testing Word after each one. When you find it, delete it and then restore the remainder of the fonts. If Word doesn't start, repeat this step first for the ~/Library/Fonts folder and then, if necessary, for the ~/Users/<your_user_name>/Library/Fonts folder, until you have eliminated the offending font. Repair Your Disk Permissions The Annoyance: Word starts okay and lets me work for a whilebut then it crashes without so much as an "Hasta la vista, Baby!" The Fix: What's probably wrong is that your disk permissions have become damaged, preventing Word from writing to some of the files or folders that it needs to be able to use. Start by repairing your disk permissions: -
Quit Word if it hasn't already quit itself. -
Click the Desktop to activate the Finder, open the Utilities folder (choose Go Utilities, or choose Go Applications and then double-click the Utilities folder), and then double-click Disk Utility to open it. -
Click the entry for your hard disk, click the First Aid tab, and then click the Repair Disk Permissions button. -
When the repair is complete, restart Mac OS X. -
If repairing your disk permissions doesn't resolve this problem, try the steps in the next Annoyance. You can also try updating your copy of Word (or Office) with the latest update available. Repair Your Preferences or Settings Files The Annoyance: Sometimes I'm working away happily enough (I'd rather be surfingwho wouldn't?) and Word 2004 just decides to up and quit on me. I was going to say that Word crashes unexpectedly, but every crash is unexpected, isn't it? On a Mac, anyway.... The Fix: These crashes could be caused by various problems, but one possibility that should appear fairly high on your list is damaged preferences or settings files. Here's how to fix them: -
Open a Finder window to your ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft folder and check out the following files, depending on whether you're using Word 2004 or Word X: -
- Word 2004
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com.microsoft.Word.prefs.plist and com.microsoft.Office.prefs. plist -
- Word X
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Word Settings (10), Microsoft Component Preferences , Microsoft Office Settings (10) , and Carbon Registration Database -
Quit Word, and then drag the com.microsoft.Word.prefs.plist file or the Word Settings (10) file from the ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft folder to the Desktop. Relaunch Word (which makes it automatically create a replacement for the missing file) and see if the problem has disappeared. If it has, you'll need to reset some of your preferences and restore your custom AutoCorrect entries; if not, drag the new file from the ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft folder to the Trash, drag the old file back from the Desktop to the ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft folder, and proceed with the next step. -
Quit Word (if it hasn't crashed) and any other Office applications you're running, and repeat the drag-to-the-Desktop process with each of the other files in turn , checking Word at each stage. Speed Up Word's Performance When Scrolling The Annoyance: When I start to scroll, Word X goes all glacial on me. Any ideas? The Fix: This sounds like the notorious problem of Live Word Count consuming every spare processor cycle. Try turning off this feature: choose Word Preferences, click the View tab, uncheck the Live Word Count box, and click the OK button. If that doesn't help, choose Word Preferences again, click the General tab, uncheck the "WYSIWYG font and style menus box, and click the OK button. This makes Word display the Font menu and the Style menu using system fonts rather than the actual fonts. It doesn't sound like much, but if your Mac has a ton of fonts installed, it can make a noticeable performance difference. Still no good? Choose Word Preferences a third time, click the Spelling and Grammar tab, and clear both the "Check spelling as you type box and the "Check grammar as you type" box. Both of these options chew up more processor cycles than they deserve. Reinstall Updaters When Necessary The Annoyance: I'm a good citizen, and I've been keeping Office updated. But Word keeps asking me to reapply the Office updaters I've already applied. The Fix: Relax, this is normal. You'll need to reapply updaters if you install or reinstall any Office component or if you install options from the Value Pack. Use the Help Check for Updates command to keep Word updated with minimal effort on your part. Recover from a Corrupted Normal Template The Annoyance: Word starts more or less okay, but then it begins to misbehave: I get either long periods of nonresponse between intervals of normal behavior, or an unexpected quitsometimes with an error message, sometimes without. I'm really not enjoying this. The Fix: Your Normal template might well have become corrupted. Quit Word if it's running, navigate to the ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data folder (for Word 2004) or the /Applications/Microsoft Office X/Templates folder (for Word X), rename Normal to another name (for example, BadNormal ), and then start Word again. If Word runs stably and responsively, you've nailed the problem. If your old Normal template contains code or customizations that you want to keep, choose Tools Macro Macros, click the Organizer button, and use the four tabs of the Organizer dialog box to copy the styles, AutoText entries, toolbars , and macro project items from your old Normal template ( BadNormal ) to the new Normal template. After you close the Organizer dialog box, Shift-click the File menu and choose Save All, and then save your Normal template if Word prompts you to do so. Beware When Page Numbering Goes Haywire The Annoyance: The page numbering in my document has gone nuts. Help! The Fix: Red flag! This usually means that the document has become corrupted. Recover it immediately as follows: -
Choose File Save As and save a copy of the document under a new name (rather than overwriting the current version with any outstanding unsaved changes). This is your primary backup of the document, but you should also save the document in other formats (as described in the rest of this list) in case this document turns out to be too corrupted to use. -
Save as Web Page, make sure the "Save entire file into HTML option is selected (rather than the "Save only display information into HTML" option, which dispenses with non-display items such as headers and footnotes), and then click the Save button. This HTML version of the document contains almost all the contents of the Word document and is saved in a stable format. -
Now reopen the document you saved in Step 1 and see if it is usable. If not, use the document you saved in Step 3 instead. If this document too proves corrupted, use the HTML document you saved in Step 2 as the last resort for re-creating the document.
Tip: OpenOffice.org (free from http://www.openoffice.org) is very good at opening corrupt Word documents and recovering their contents.
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to deselect the last paragraph mark in the document. (The last paragraph mark is the default section break, which contains the master formatting table for the document.) Press +C to copy the selection, and then press 