I am operation osx 10.5.8 and have installed Apple and office updates. Currently office 8 for mac version 12.0. I use excel all day long - some large files (few megs)
I have looked into iworks 09 and it sound great. I downloaded the trial version. It also locked up.
When my computer locks up the spinning wheel is visible but I cannot do anything. I wait and wait but eventually all I can do it a hard shutdown and restart. Excel reopens with the files wanting me to resave them.
Running Snow Leopard. When I get repeated lockups I've had good results exiting (or killing) Excel and deleting the preferences file ~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Excel.plist
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