Word 2004, Entourage Address Book, and table cells

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macdobr@shaw.ca - 05 Mar 2006 09:31 GMT

This problem has just arisen since the change from Office X to Office
2004. I have unloaded and reloaded every constituent part of the
system which I thought might be involved, but have had no luck. Here is
the problem: we produce invoices for a home-based business. They are
Word based, with a templated Excel spreadsheet which is updated and
"saved as" for each invoice we generate. The Word and Excel portions
are fine.
The portion of the invoice which indicates the name and address of the
person being billed is contained in a 2-cell table: the first cell
contains the word "To:" and the second cell contains the name and
address of the client. We complete the name and address of the person
using the "Contact" toolbar, which pulls the information off the
Entourage address book. The reason we use this format is it allows us
to enter the Name and Address all aligned in the second ever-expanding
cell, without having to use tabs to move the several lines of the
address over - and it looks good to have the information boxed like
that.
In Office X we had no problem in choosing a contact name, and then the
associated address. After moving the cursor over from the first cell,
and choosing the contact name from the drop down list, the cursor would
sit blinking away at the end of the contact name, and the options for
"address" and "telephone number" would be active and ready to be chosen
in the Contact toolbar.
In Office 2004 we can choose the contact name from the drop-down
address list, but the cursor is not actively blinking at the end of the
name after it has been chosen. Moreover, if you click at the end of the
name in order to activate the cursor, the psychedelic beach ball starts
spinning, and the whole system hangs. The only way out is a "Force
Quit". In addition, the "Address" and "Telephone Number" options are
greyed out in the Contact toolbar, and clicking on either of those
places instead of the end of the name also results in a hang.
I have tested the Contact toolbar in all other places in a Word
document and there does not seem to be any problem - this only appears
to happen if you drop a contact name into a table, and then it doesn't
matter what you do, where you put your cursor or what key you hit, the
program hangs.
Has anybody else experienced this problem, or have any ideas how to fix
it?

TIA

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Daiya Mitchell - 05 Mar 2006 22:16 GMT

Okay. I tested this in Word 2004 (11.2.1), OS 10.3.9, and inserting a
contact into a table works fine. The cursor does leap to after the table,
and Include Address etc are initially grayed out because the cursor is not
on a contact. However, I was able to click back to the end of the name
easily enough, and at that point, Include Address and Include Phone, etc,
were active and easy to insert the address.

So the initial cursor location is a change for the worse, but something
additional is screwy on your machine--the hanging is not inherent in the
program.

First, use Help | Check for Updates in any Office program and make sure your
Office suite is fully updated, just in case this is a bug that got fixed.
Or use Word | About Word and make sure the info dialog says version 11.2.

However, my guess would be that the table is corrupt--that seems to go with
the spinning beach ball when you attempt to click into the table. Try
uncorrupting the table by using Table | Convert Table to Text, and then
using Table | Convert Text to Table. Or if the table is blank anyhow, just
try deleting and recreating it.

Do you actually use a Word template for the invoice, or do you just open up
a previous invoice and do a Save As and change the information? I'm
guessing that the template method might be less likely to produce a corrupt
table.

Side note, just in case it might save you a millisecond in the future: after
entering the contact, you can also right-click (or control-click) on the
name and use include address, include phone, etc from that contextual menu.
In that case, the location of the cursor becomes irrelevant.

Side note 2: uninstalling and reinstalling rarely fixes problems with
MacWord. There are many other troubleshooting tips that should be tried
first, listed on this page. I am NOT suggesting that you try any of these
now, just giving you the link for future reference.
http://word.mvps.org/Mac/TroubleshootingIndex.html

> This problem has just arisen since the change from Office X to Office
> 2004. I have unloaded and reloaded every constituent part of the
[quoted text clipped - 36 lines]
>
> TIA

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Daiya Mitchell, MVP Mac/Word
Word FAQ: http://www.word.mvps.org/
MacWord Tips: <http://word.mvps.org/Mac/WordMacHome.html>
What's an MVP? A volunteer! Read the FAQ: http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/

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Mac Forum / Applications / Word / March 2006

Word 2004, Entourage Address Book, and table cells