[SOLVED] MS Word 08 won't open - help!

Well, sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't...

More and more, the little opening screen comes up and it says it's "optimizing font menu performance" and that can go on for hours.

Sometimes, it will open if I restart - not today.

(My Mac has OS X 10.4.11)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Hi there and welcome,

have you recently installed any new fonts? It sounds like one is corrupt, you could try removing the prefs files first.

Go to your home folder>Library>Preferences>Microsoft.

Trash the files: Office Font Cache and Word Font Substitutes.

As an interim measure I would probably download OpenOffice and at least you can then edit your documents...

regards

Ric

Hello Bea4Ads and welcome to mac-forum

I second OpenOffice.org ... it's free and is interactive with Microsoft Office ...

Thank you both - I'll try both your suggestions!

Be sure to let us know how you get on, Bea4Ads

nothing is working - I threw out the office font cache and the word font subs AND all my word preferences and it still won't open. have had trouble in the past but usually restarting my computer and waiting a while works. I think it's time for a new computer - this one is at least 6 or 7 years old.

and something is terribly wrong with my fonts! I can't turn any of them off - so no matter what program I'm working in, they ALL show up - all 900+

I'm going to get a manual typewriter...

^ Have you validated your fonts using Font Book?

Well, you may be Walrus666, but you are heaven sent! THANK YOU, it worked! I didn't have any major front problems but I removed the iffy fonts and Word just opened right up.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!

You're welcome. Hopefully, those "iffy" fonts that were removed won't be needed by the system or an application. One must be very careful when it comes to removing fonts.

I've only ever disabled some fonts, not game to actually remove any ... Good work, Walrus