Glitches with Excel in Leopard

I am having four major problems with Excel 2008;

1) Nearly every time I open .DOC files (rather than .DOCX) the application crashes my whole system. I have contacted Microsoft technical support (see point 4) and the only thing they suggested is trashing the preference files, this has not worked;

2) The second problem is that whenever I save a file with the cells formatted as currency using the £ (pound) sign, when I re-open the file all of the £ (pound) signs have changed to $ (dollar) signs. As I am in the UK this is a major headache.

3) The third problem I am having is that when I open files previously created on Office for Mac 2004 or Office for PC 2003 I cannot get the page breaks to reset. Even when I use the 'reset all page breaks' command, some page breaks remain and cannot be a) moved or b) removed. The way page breaks are handled in Office 2008 seems to be a major step back from Office 2004.

4) Dealing with Microsoft Technical Support has been like swimming through treacle! I send an email and have to wait for a reply overnight asking me questions that I have already answered. I realise that the support is probably not based in the UK, but it does seem a bit poor that a company Microsoft's size cannot provide round the clock support. Also, because they will only deal with one issue at a time, it could take months to get to the bottom of these problems. I feel like it is designed to make people 'give up' and live with the issues (which cannot happen in this case as they are too great).

Office 2008 has been the most bug-ridden and disappointing software I have purchased in twenty years as a Mac user.

If anybody has any suggestions for solving these problems, I would be very grateful.

Regards

Andy
 >> Stay informed about: Glitches with Excel in Leopard 

In article <ee7fdb7.98.RemoveThis@webcrossing.caR9absDaxw>, andyd.RemoveThis@officeformac.com
wrote:

> I am having four major problems with Excel 2008;
>
> 1) Nearly every time I open .DOC files (rather than .DOCX) the application
> crashes my whole system. I have contacted Microsoft technical support (see
> point 4) and the only thing they suggested is trashing the preference files,
> this has not worked;

Hmm... both .doc AND .docx files should be opened with Word, not XL. I
get a dialog that asks if I want to switch - do you? Do you have Word
set as the default application for .doc files in Finder?

As far as the pref file, did you have XL closed when you trashed it? If
not, XL will write any bad settings to the new file.

> 2) The second problem is that whenever I save a file with the cells formatted
> as currency using the £ (pound) sign, when I re-open the file all of the £
> (pound) signs have changed to $ (dollar) signs. As I am in the UK this is a
> major headache.

XL *SHOULD* pick up its currency format from System Preferences'
International Format Pane setting when XL starts up. I assume you have
that set to British Pound Sterling?

What do you see for number format in Format/Style when you select
Currency as the Style name?

> 3) The third problem I am having is that when I open files previously created
> on Office for Mac 2004 or Office for PC 2003 I cannot get the page breaks to
> reset. Even when I use the 'reset all page breaks' command, some page breaks
> remain and cannot be a) moved or b) removed. The way page breaks are handled
> in Office 2008 seems to be a major step back from Office 2004.

I haven't seen this here - page breaks have worked the same for me as
XL04 (except that my page handling macros no longer work, obviously).

Do you have "Fit to x pages wide and y pages tall" set in File/Page
Setup?

> 4) Dealing with Microsoft Technical Support has been like swimming through
> treacle! I send an email and have to wait for a reply overnight asking me
> questions that I have already answered. I realise that the support is
> probably not based in the UK, but it does seem a bit poor that a company
> Microsoft's size cannot provide round the clock support. Also, because they
> will only deal with one issue at a time, it could take months to get to the
> bottom of these problems. I feel like it is designed to make people 'give up'
> and live with the issues (which cannot happen in this case as they are too
> great).

Not really an XL problem, but sounds frustrating. I've never dealt with
Tech support by email - but I've had more luck with phone support.

> Office 2008 has been the most bug-ridden and disappointing software I have
> purchased in twenty years as a Mac user.
>
> If anybody has any suggestions for solving these problems, I would be very
> grateful.
 >> Stay informed about: Glitches with Excel in Leopard 

I'm sorry to hear of your pain with Excel 2008. Here are a few comments
about the issues you're encountering:

1) If you meant .xls or .xlsx files, then I'm guessing you have an Nvidia
GeoForce graphics card and this is a known OS X driver issue that has been
affecting Excel and a lot of other applications. We've alerted Apple about
the bug and have encouraged them to release a fix as soon as possible.

2) We are aware of this problem and are hoping to release a fix very soon.

3) We are also aware of this issue and, like the currency symbol issue, hope
to have a fix available soon. Please set Microsoft AutoUpdate to check for
updates regularly.

4) Although Technical Support is provided by a separate organization than
the Mac Business Unit that develops Mac Office, I've forwarded your comments
onto a contact on the Technical Support team.

Thanks,

Pat


On 5/1/08 7:16 AM, in article
jemcgimpsey-7E32C9.08162301052008 RemoveThis @news.microsoft.com, "JE McGimpsey"
<jemcgimpsey RemoveThis @mvps.org> wrote:

> In article <ee7fdb7.98 RemoveThis @webcrossing.caR9absDaxw>, andyd RemoveThis @officeformac.com
> wrote:
>
>> I am having four major problems with Excel 2008;
>>
>> 1) Nearly every time I open .DOC files (rather than .DOCX) the application
>> crashes my whole system. I have contacted Microsoft technical support (see
>> point 4) and the only thing they suggested is trashing the preference files,
>> this has not worked;
>
> Hmm... both .doc AND .docx files should be opened with Word, not XL. I
> get a dialog that asks if I want to switch - do you? Do you have Word
> set as the default application for .doc files in Finder?
>
> As far as the pref file, did you have XL closed when you trashed it? If
> not, XL will write any bad settings to the new file.
>
>> 2) The second problem is that whenever I save a file with the cells formatted
>> as currency using the £ (pound) sign, when I re-open the file all of the £
>> (pound) signs have changed to $ (dollar) signs. As I am in the UK this is a
>> major headache.
>
> XL *SHOULD* pick up its currency format from System Preferences'
> International Format Pane setting when XL starts up. I assume you have
> that set to British Pound Sterling?
>
> What do you see for number format in Format/Style when you select
> Currency as the Style name?
>
>> 3) The third problem I am having is that when I open files previously created
>> on Office for Mac 2004 or Office for PC 2003 I cannot get the page breaks to
>> reset. Even when I use the 'reset all page breaks' command, some page breaks
>> remain and cannot be a) moved or b) removed. The way page breaks are handled
>> in Office 2008 seems to be a major step back from Office 2004.
>
> I haven't seen this here - page breaks have worked the same for me as
> XL04 (except that my page handling macros no longer work, obviously).
>
> Do you have "Fit to x pages wide and y pages tall" set in File/Page
> Setup?
>
>> 4) Dealing with Microsoft Technical Support has been like swimming through
>> treacle! I send an email and have to wait for a reply overnight asking me
>> questions that I have already answered. I realise that the support is
>> probably not based in the UK, but it does seem a bit poor that a company
>> Microsoft's size cannot provide round the clock support. Also, because they
>> will only deal with one issue at a time, it could take months to get to the
>> bottom of these problems. I feel like it is designed to make people 'give up'
>> and live with the issues (which cannot happen in this case as they are too
>> great).
>
> Not really an XL problem, but sounds frustrating. I've never dealt with
> Tech support by email - but I've had more luck with phone support.
>
>> Office 2008 has been the most bug-ridden and disappointing software I have
>> purchased in twenty years as a Mac user.
>>
>> If anybody has any suggestions for solving these problems, I would be very
>> grateful.

--
Pat McMillan
Macintosh Business Unit
Microsoft Corp.
This posting is provided ³AS IS² with no warranties, and confers no rights.
 >> Stay informed about: Glitches with Excel in Leopard 

I continue to have problems with excel on my Imac (2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro Video, OSX 10.5.2) Most frequent is "Not enough memory" message that appears after using for a while. I close spreadsheet, quit excel and restart excel and it's ok for a while. Also have had excel crashes and cases where excel won't open file again after it is saved (reopened with older excel on another machine, resaved and then was able to open in excel 2008?? Any help would be appreciated as I use excel pivot table a lot and this release has been a very frustrating experience.
 >> Stay informed about: Glitches with Excel in Leopard 

Please watch for the next update for Office 2008 and let us know if you
still encounter these problems after installing the update.

Thanks,

Pat


On 5/8/08 5:55 AM, in article ee7fdb7.101 DeleteThis @webcrossing.caR9absDaxw,
"Bozrite@officeformac.com" <Bozrite DeleteThis @officeformac.com> wrote:

> I continue to have problems with excel on my Imac (2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo,
> ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro Video, OSX 10.5.2) Most frequent is "Not enough memory"
> message that appears after using for a while. I close spreadsheet, quit excel
> and restart excel and it's ok for a while. Also have had excel crashes and
> cases where excel won't open file again after it is saved (reopened with older
> excel on another machine, resaved and then was able to open in excel 2008??
> Any help would be appreciated as I use excel pivot table a lot and this
> release has been a very frustrating experience.

--
Pat McMillan
Macintosh Business Unit
Microsoft Corp.
This posting is provided ³AS IS² with no warranties, and confers no rights.
 >> Stay informed about: Glitches with Excel in Leopard