Cannot Run Ms Office 2004 Apps from Sandbox

[mpkalman]

Dave,

I recently installed MS Office 2004 on my Mac HD partition. I then cloned a Sandbox partition(shared users and Apps). Of the four office apps, namely, Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Entourage, only Entourage will run from Sandbox. When I run office 2004 on my original partition(Mac HD), they all work fine.

I followed your instructions to another user who had problems with Virtual PC and created a new script which copied rather than shared the complete MS Office 2004 folder in the Applications folder. After using this script to reclone, I found identical behavior, Entourage runs, the other apps do not.

Up until now I had been running Microsoft Office X. I have had no problems running all of its apps from Sandbox while being shared.

Any ideas?

Martin Kalman

[dnanian]

Hm! That's strange, Martin -- I use Office 2004 all the time on the Sandbox, and it works just fine for me.

Do you get any errors in the console? What exactly happens when you try to run the applications?

[mpkalman]

Dave,

Thanks for the prompt reply. When I run the office programs, an error message file is generated by Microsoft Error Reporting. I have attached this report which is named (Microsoft Error report.doc).

Hope this helps,
Martin Kalman

[dnanian]

From that, it looks to me like you have some bad fonts, or a font manager of some sort that's having trouble. Possible?

[mpkalman]

Dave,

You may well be right. However, I have had no prior indication of this. Can you suggest some font software that could analyze/identify/rectify such a problem?

Thanks,
Martin Kalman

[dnanian]

Try starting up FontBook and look for multiple conflicting and/or damaged fonts. You might also want to try deleting the font cache.

[bweylock]

Did you solve this problem? I have exactly the same symptoms.

A bit hard to believe that I suddenly have font problems since I can run Office flawlessly on the original drive.

[dnanian]

Well, give the instructions here a shot and see if you can find anything wrong. I've got Office here and it works fine on both a Safety Clone and the original (and I've only had this one report -- now two -- of an issue)... that doesn't mean there's nothing wrong, it just means I don't know what it is.

[bweylock]

Since I have not ever had a font problem, I don't really know how FontBook works and can find nothing in the help files about using it to identify font problems.

It of course shows duplicate copies of fonts in Sandbox and the original. Is that in itself a problem?

[bweylock]

And, FYI, repairing Sandbox permissions had no effect on the problem (still there).

[dnanian]

Did you install extra fonts in the "system" area, or in your "user" area? If in the "system" area, try moving them to "user" -- that in itself might resolve the issue, since they'll be shared, not copied.

(Don't do this to system fonts -- just the ones *you* added.)

I wouldn't expect repairing permissions to have any effect... so that makes sense.

[bweylock]

I have never installed "extra" fonts - at least not in well over a year.

[bweylock]

Just thought to check the console error log:
2005-03-01 11:44:16.863 Microsoft Error Reporting[18051] CFLog (21): Cannot find executable for CFBundle 0x14af80 </System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/liberty.framework> (not loaded)

Does that suggest anything to you? The same error is generated each time.

Thanks!

[dnanian]

I understand that you haven't installed fonts in over a year, but I'm trying to figure out whether those extra fonts might be the issue... that's why I asked. Moving those locally -- to ~/Library/Fonts -- might help.

Regarding the "liberty.framework", I have no idea what it is. I don't have it on my system, and it might be referring to something that isn't supposed to be there. Hard to tell.

(I assume, BTW, that you've updated to the most recent Office 2004 release?)

[bweylock]

Didn't mean to sound so argumentative, but I have no idea what "extra fonts" might be.

I have not personally installed any fonts per se since mid-2003, and that was one font called Futura.

If fonts were the culprit, would I not have been having trouble prior to this?

Not trying to be stubborn, but what would I do if I wanted to check for "extra" fonts and remove them to the user library?

Yes, absolutely the latest version of everything.

The problem is only with Word, by the way. I didn't check that until just now. Excel and PP run just fine. I deleted the plist for Word with no help.

[dnanian]

No problem... I'm trying to figure this out too. Try deleting the "Office Font Cache" in your Preferences, see if that makes a difference.

[dnanian]

(To close off this thread, we moved to email and after some back-and-forth it turned out that this particular crash was entirely different than the font-related one. In this case, a bad alias in the Office preferences was causing the problem. Resetting those prefs resolved the problem.)

[bweylock]

(To close off this thread, we moved to email and after some back-and-forth it turned out that this particular crash was entirely different than the font-related one. In this case, a bad alias in the Office preferences was causing the problem. Resetting those prefs resolved the problem.)
And to risk beating the thread to death... Want to add thanks for the really terrific level of attention and concern. We had some miscommunication because I didn't make it clear enough that the symptoms turned out to be different, but anyone who buys one of your programs is lucky in many ways. Thanks again!


Best,


- Bill

[TPinho]

Okay, so maybe it's totally out of line for me to butt in, and post to a closed thread--- I profusely apologize for my rudeness--- but I'm totally at my wits end, and a google search for the console message that is currently the bane of my existence pointed me to this page...
Please, oh please, Gods of the Mac world take pity on this little graphics geek and kindly point me to the aliases that were in error here... I'm getting the identical messages--- and am totally at a loss--- Luckily, all my office works, except if it has to access the finder in any way shape or form (then the console shows me it's having trouble, </System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/liberty.framework> (not loaded), big fun...
I promise to build a small shrine replete with SpongeBob Pez dispenser and a neon orange windup lobster (with clackity claw action!)
Thanks so much!
*PC geek ever-so-humbled by OSX...*

-Thom.

[bweylock]

Okay, so maybe it's totally out of line for me to butt in, and post to a closed thread--- I profusely apologize for my rudeness--- but I'm totally at my wits end, and a google search for the console message that is currently the bane of my existence pointed me to this page...
Please, oh please, Gods of the Mac world take pity on this little graphics geek and kindly point me to the aliases that were in error here... I'm getting the identical messages--- and am totally at a loss--- Luckily, all my office works, except if it has to access the finder in any way shape or form (then the console shows me it's having trouble, </System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/liberty.framework> (not loaded), big fun...
I promise to build a small shrine replete with SpongeBob Pez dispenser and a neon orange windup lobster (with clackity claw action!)
Thanks so much!
*PC geek ever-so-humbled by OSX...*

-Thom.
It's not a dumb question or inappropriate at all. Guess that's not totally up to me to say, but I can't see disagreement.

The actual process isn't clear.

Dave had me go into ~/Library/Preferences and rename the Microsoft folder to Microsoft.saved.

Then log out and back in... see what happens.

If you're getting the Database Daemon alert that I was, you just need to remove all copies of Database Daemon in your Login items (under Account preferences).

Hope this helps. I think it will.


Best,


- Bill

[dnanian]

Just rename your Office preferences, Thom, and see if it helps. You'll find the responsible folder off your Home folder in:

Library/Preferences/Microsoft

rename "Microsoft" to "Microsoft.saved" and log out and back in. That should resolve the issue.

[TPinho]

Thank you both!

I did as suggested and still no joy--- so I had to resort to an archive and install... (after playing around with terminal *shudders* and a not-to-friendly tech pro on the phone) Luckily it looks like the only damage done in the long run was to Dreamweaver (an on the office machine, I only maintain one site, so it's not too much to redo at all...)
I'm still flummoxed by a lot of the Mac terms- and realize that I have a heck of a lot to learn- especially after this experience. Dave, your SuperDuper! is making my rec. requisition list for our next round of installs here...
I'm so used to dealing with PC's- and, forgive me for saying it, they are SO much more straightforward and documented for troubleshooting issues... Seems like OSX is given over to faith-healers half the time- (Images of Gary Larson's "Applicance Healers" anyone?) I'm off to amazon now, time to read up on this stuff as much as possible...

Thanks again!
Y'all ROCK my world...

-Thom.

[dnanian]

Quite sorry we weren't able to help, Thom: unfortunately, it's hard to diagnose this stuff based on some basic information. But, glad that you got things running again.

It does take a little while to get your head around the Mac. But one nice thing is that -- really -- the Mac doesn't suffer from "Windows Rot" which I'm sure you are used to. There's typically little need for reinstalls (and, given time, we probably could have figured out what was going on there)... truly, it's not so much faith healing as careful diagnosis. Unfortunately, people rarely have time for that kind of thing!