Back to 10.4 and Office 2004. Life is Good

[Bimwad]

I don't run haxies, and my machine is neither sick nor in need of professional care.

I do have an Excel workbook that was created in 1996 with whatever version of Excel was current at that time, and used with the various versions of Excel since then. It's a simple spreadsheet with five columns of data, three calculated columns, and various graphs of said data. Simple math.

With a switch to a new Intel Mac with max RAM and clean standard installation of 2008, I find that Excel crashes every time I select the Source Data menu item to edit the formulas to account for new data. Every time. A brand new feature for 2008, I suppose.

I can work around it by highlighting the graph first, then selecting the menu item, making the edit, then saving the workbook. The last step is crucial because the workaround only works once before the crash occurs. So add an additional step to close the file, and repeat for each graph. Each crash leaves detritus that shows up in a Recovered Files folder in the trash on the subsequent restart.

Just a simple, fundamental action to call up a dialog to edit data. No fancy or complex manipulations going on.

There is validity to the point about poorly maintained machines, but in this case, Office 2008 is clearly and solely at fault.

[tronnei]

sekker wrote:
You should be able to run word 5 via sheepsaver

Would be fun to try

I'll see if I can get it to go

No problem:

[Doc]

> in this case, Office 2008 is clearly and solely at fault.

Yeah. That's why you're the only one with the problem.


> Each crash leaves detritus that shows up in a Recovered Files
> folder in the trash on the subsequent restart.

That's perfectly normal. The Mac OS does that if it finds temp files that haven't been cleaned up and they wouldn't be cleaned up if the app crashed.

...

Does the same thing happen when you right-click on a chart and choose "select data" ...?

Have you updated Office '08 since installing it? What version are you running now?

Does the crash occur when you change to a different chart-type?

Have you cleaned caches lately?

Have you cleaned font caches since encountering this problem?

Does the issue persist when you log in as a different user?

Does the issue persist when you're safe-booted?

Is ANY other program crashing on you regularly?

[Don C]

Doc,
The MacBook Pro is a 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (sorry I did not specify this) with 4GB SDRAM running 10.5.5. The spreadsheet that I was running the other day (one of several spreadsheets, actually) had 1345 rows. I pulled several columns of information into it via VLOOKUP. Once the calculation is complete, I do a copy/paste special/values routine to fix the data. The copy part of the routine ran for 20 minutes or more. One time I copied several columns; another time I copied only two columns.

I am getting the same thing on my accelerated G4 Audio Video machine running 10.4. (latest updates). Long copy times in 2008 that do not happen in 2004.

Both versions, 2004 and 2008 of Excel have the problem of crashing while writing formulas although 2008 seems to be worse meaning that the crash happens fairly often in 2004 but very often in 2008. The crashing happens with VLOOKUP and with COUNT functions. I spend most of my time using Excel, so I don't spend a lot of time with other programs, but Entourage 08, Appleworks, and a variety of browsers all work with no crashing at all. Both 2004 and 2008 crash while writing these functions on both machines. The copies of 2004 on both machines were installed from the same CD and the copies of 2008 were installed from the same DVD. We purchased several licenses but one media in each case.

I thought that the crashing while writing a formula was related to my Mac until a Windows using colleague asked me about Excel crashing while writing formulas. The only thing common to his Windows machine and my Macs is that we log onto the same network.