Microsoft Office 2008

I have installed Microsoft Office 2008 in my recently purchased Macbook Pro. It has ran well for about a week. When i tried to open word to write a paper last night it opened, stayed for a second and then closed out. A message then popped up that said "Microsoft word has encountered a problem and needs to close." It does this for every application that has come with Microsoft office. I have updated word up to version 12.1.2 and it stays up longer but still closes out after 3 seconds at most. And i have done all of the system updates as well and it still happends. Woudl it work if i uninstalled it and then re installed it in my computer? I bought it through my school, and can only be "installed once" does that for ever, or just can only be installed on one computer.

any help would be great because i need to write a lot of papers in college haha

That's what I would try. I think the single install reference pertains to installing that particular copy on more than one machine.

...encountered a problem and needs to close.

GoGeoGo said:

I have installed Microsoft Office 2008 in my recently purchased Macbook Pro. It has ran well for about a week. When i tried to open word to write a paper last night it opened, stayed for a second and then closed out. A message then popped up that said "Microsoft word has encountered a problem and needs to close." It does this for every application that has come with Microsoft office. I have updated word up to version 12.1.2 and it stays up longer but still closes out after 3 seconds at most. And i have done all of the system updates as well and it still happends. Woudl it work if i uninstalled it and then re installed it in my computer? I bought it through my school, and can only be "installed once" does that for ever, or just can only be installed on one computer.

any help would be great because i need to write a lot of papers in college haha

Click to expand...

Not sure if this is the same issue, but I’m using Mac OS X 10.5.6 and after a recent Office update I had some problems with Excel.

Using mac office 2008 when I tried to open any excel file, or start from scratch, I got, “microsoft excel has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.”

After searching several forums I came across this nugget:
Have you tried quitting all Office apps then throwing away your Office and Excel preferences:
~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Excel.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.plist

Since I was having issues with Excel, I threw just the Excel file away, and when I started Excel again, bingo it worked! No idea why, just did.

Your problem may be fixed, but thought I'd post this for those that may be up at 3 am ready to type that paper or work on that spreadsheet and looking for an answer.

Excel 2008 crashes

This worked for me beautifully ! After months of seeing Exel crash randomly and then 100% I was so frustrated. I reinstalled from disk and still the problem remained. Finally deleted ~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Excel.plist and it worked. Thanks

00dave said:

Not sure if this is the same issue, but I’m using Mac OS X 10.5.6 and after a recent Office update I had some problems with Excel.

Using mac office 2008 when I tried to open any excel file, or start from scratch, I got, “microsoft excel has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.”

After searching several forums I came across this nugget:
Have you tried quitting all Office apps then throwing away your Office and Excel preferences:
~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Excel.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.plist

Since I was having issues with Excel, I threw just the Excel file away, and when I started Excel again, bingo it worked! No idea why, just did.

Your problem may be fixed, but thought I'd post this for those that may be up at 3 am ready to type that paper or work on that spreadsheet and looking for an answer.

Click to expand...

I found Office 2008 and 2011 to be buggy piles of junk as far as software goes so you might temporarily solve a problem but more will inevitably pop up. If updating to newer software isn't an option you might try the Office web apps. They are free to use and offer what seems like 90% of the functionality of their desktop counterparts. You'll get the most recent software this way as well and won't have problems opening files created in newer versions.

You might have found MS Office buggy (just your opinion) but for many of us who have been using both the Mac and Windows versions for years, it's been rock steady. I use MS Office 2011 almost every day for my work and it has never failed me.

chscag said:

You might have found MS Office buggy (just your opinion) but for many of us who have been using both the Mac and Windows versions for years, it's been rock steady. I use MS Office 2011 almost every day for my work and it has never failed me.

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You are very lucky then because the internet is ripe with complaints about these kind of force quit problems. Office 2016 has been a leaps and bounds improvement on OSX but still not quite up to what its Windows counterpart is. It was so bad for me I actually wound up learning LaTeX for writing documents and doing 90% of my computational stuff in Python. I'll open up a Google Sheet if I need some quick and dirty calculations in spreadsheet form. The 2016 version has allowed me to move some of my stuff back into Word though.

@danipoak

I have to agree with chscag. I have been using Microsoft Office for Mac since its first appearance, through all its iterations up to and including the latest update to the 2011 version. At a rough guess, I have prepared around 400 lectures on PowerPoint, and use Word on a daily basis. Not once has the product failed me. And working with numerous colleagues with the whole range of Macs, my experience has been echoed by theirs.

Currently, Office 2016 version is only available to those with a 365 subscription, but a stand alone version is promised for September for those of us with Office 2011. Reports from testers and users suggests that the Mac version is very much closer to the Windows experience.

Ian

IWT said:

Currently, Office 2016 version is only available to those with a 365 subscription, but a stand alone version is promised for September for those of us with Office 2011.

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Let's hope the Office team uses that time to patch it. I've been using it since it became available (365 user here) and it needs some QA love. In fact, just today, things started discolouring and the entire ribbon went white.

And I also agree. Office is the best suite available.

Removing the ,plist files solves many problems. Also I choose never to migrate Office, remove from old machine and do a clean install and update seems to work the best.

IWT said:

@danipoak

I have to agree with chscag. I have been using Microsoft Office for Mac since its first appearance, through all its iterations up to and including the latest update to the 2011 version. At a rough guess, I have prepared around 400 lectures on PowerPoint, and use Word on a daily basis. Not once has the product failed me. And working with numerous colleagues with the whole range of Macs, my experience has been echoed by theirs.

Currently, Office 2016 version is only available to those with a 365 subscription, but a stand alone version is promised for September for those of us with Office 2011. Reports from testers and users suggests that the Mac version is very much closer to the Windows experience.

Ian

Click to expand...

It is much, much closer to the Windows version which is great. I've only had it crash on me twice. Once during the preview release and once in the last week with the final release. I have noticed problems on documents created on older versions of office being opened up in 2016 and using exorbitant amounts of CPU which might have lead to the crash. Just today I was editing one that took up 70% of my CPU.

Office is rather stable for everyday uses and I can echo the stability in that regard. It does have problems for some power users though which is where much of my usage is. Editing 100+ page documents is a nightmare. I found it difficult for documents over 50 pages even. Excel tends to work well as long as the data sets don't get too large. Powerpoint I really never had problems with other than not liking the UI. I'm more attached to Keynote for presentations.

I was merely echoing the OPs problems of crashing and trying to offer a solution that worked for me. I apologize for insulting MS Office in the process.

I was merely echoing the OPs problems of crashing and trying to offer a solution that worked for me. I apologize for insulting MS Office in the process.

Click to expand...

LOL, you don't have to apologize for that. Goodness knows how many times I bad-mouthed something from Microsoft. I'll be interested in hearing about how well users are liking Windows 10 after the disaster called Windows 8.

I have no real opinion on MS 2016 as of yet, but I'm wondering about the wisdom of using Office 2008 on a "recently-purchased" MacBook Pro that is presumably running Yosemite. I was unaware that would even work at all. Certainly the OP should (if available) upgrade to Office 2011, but while that problem is being worked on I would suggest downloading LibreOffice as a temporary substitute.

I have no real opinion on MS 2016 as of yet, but I'm wondering about the wisdom of using Office 2008 on a "recently-purchased" MacBook Pro that is presumably running Yosemite.

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Better get a new set of readers chas. That post you referred to was from 2008. ;D

Doh! Caught by a zombie thread again!

KSIDDIQ` said:

This worked for me beautifully ! After months of seeing Exel crash randomly and then 100% I was so frustrated. I reinstalled from disk and still the problem remained. Finally deleted ~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Excel.plist and it worked. Thanks

Click to expand...

I too did this, and it worked for me. But the files keep coming back and making Excel crash again. Any way I can delete them permanently/stop it from happening again?

Hi Richard

Welcome to the forums.

I am no expert on the "inner" workings of the Mac nor the apps using it; but it seems axiomatic to me that having deleted the plist files, the app will recreate them in order to function. As I understood things, deletion of plist files was to do away with any corrupted files, so forcing the app to create new ones.

On that basis, permanent deletion is impossible.

Ian

IWT said:

Hi Richard

Welcome to the forums.

I am no expert on the "inner" workings of the Mac nor the apps using it; but it seems axiomatic to me that having deleted the plist files, the app will recreate them in order to function. As I understood things, deletion of plist files was to do away with any corrupted files, so forcing the app to create new ones.

On that basis, permanent deletion is impossible.

Ian

Click to expand...

Hi Ian

Thanks for replying

If the files re-appear, how does deleting them work in this case?

I did notice that it was a solution that seemed to work for some and not for others.

I've never needed to use Excel on my Mac before the last week, but now I'm planning to use it every day for my current job - and so when it's been crashing every five minutes, it's been no fun.

I found the advice on this forum and initially it seemed to work. But in the last 24 hours, the problem has return - as have the files.

After deleting, seeing them re-appear, deleting, seeing them re-appear, I installed a trial version of MacKeeper, and the latest deletions hasn't seen them return. But I'm worried they will and the crashing will continue.

Basically, it's been driving me mad! Any additional advice would be very much appreciated.

First, before doing anything else... remove MacKeeper as it is Malware and will do more harm to your system. You can read about MacKeeper all over the Web by doing a google on it. Next, which version of Office are you using? If it's the new version (Office 2016) you need to be aware that it is buggy and currently under repair by Microsoft. The latest update to El Capitan (10.11.1) includes a bug fix for Office 2016 but we don't know yet how effective that is in fixing it. Office 2011 is rock steady and should be used until all the Office 2016 problems are cleared up.

chscag said:

First, before doing anything else... remove MacKeeper as it is Malware and will do more harm to your system. You can read about MacKeeper all over the Web by doing a google on it. Next, which version of Office are you using? If it's the new version (Office 2016) you need to be aware that it is buggy and currently under repair by Microsoft. The latest update to El Capitan (10.11.1) includes a bug fix for Office 2016 but we don't know yet how effective that is in fixing it. Office 2011 is rock steady and should be used until all the Office 2016 problems are cleared up.

Click to expand...

Thanks so much for the advice again. Mackeeper now removed. It shows you how desperate I was to fix it, that I didn't first checking what Mackeeper actually was!

My version of Office is 2008.