Please tell me I haven't deleted it.
January 19, 2012 9:35 AM Subscribe
I'm setting up new identities on a MacBook for work, and I accidentally put Microsoft Word in the trash. I pulled it back out and into the Office file, but now it's not working. My colleagues need this computer to travel this afternoon! Hope me?
I was dragging the Word icon to the toolbar at the bottom of the screen, and accidentally dropped it onto the desktop. So I just dragged that onto the toolbar, and deleted the icon on the desktop, assuming it was just a shortcut. I realized after that it was no longer in the Office folder in applications, and found it in the Trash. I pulled it from there back to the Office folder, but now when I try to open it, it says "The application Microsoft Word quit unexpectedly". I can't find the disk for the program in the office to reinstall. Is there any way to fix this?
It's a MacBook running OSX 10.5.8.
Thank you!
I was dragging the Word icon to the toolbar at the bottom of the screen, and accidentally dropped it onto the desktop. So I just dragged that onto the toolbar, and deleted the icon on the desktop, assuming it was just a shortcut. I realized after that it was no longer in the Office folder in applications, and found it in the Trash. I pulled it from there back to the Office folder, but now when I try to open it, it says "The application Microsoft Word quit unexpectedly". I can't find the disk for the program in the office to reinstall. Is there any way to fix this?
It's a MacBook running OSX 10.5.8.
Thank you!
I was able to reproduce your problem and fix it on my own machine. You'll be okay. MS Word relies on a bunch of shared libraries that are linked to wherever the file was originally. On my copy of Word there is a folder in Applications called MS Office 2004 and then a folder inside that called Office. If you put the file in the folder called Office [like if you got there via search] it will fail in the way you describe. Open up the Applications directory, figure out which folder the other MS Office apps are in [look for Excel] and toss it in there. You probably put it into the wrong folder and this should be easy to fix.
posted by jessamyn at 9:52 AM on January 19, 2012 [3 favorites]
posted by jessamyn at 9:52 AM on January 19, 2012 [3 favorites]
I was typing my response, but on preview: What Jessamyn said.
posted by brianogilvie at 9:54 AM on January 19, 2012
posted by brianogilvie at 9:54 AM on January 19, 2012
Response by poster: Thanks for the reply. It is currently in the same folder as Excel, PowerPoint, etc...(sorry, I was just using the wrong title for the folder). So technically it's in the folder labelled "Microsoft Office 2008", not the one within that called simply "Office". Any other thoughts?
posted by sabotagerabbit at 9:55 AM on January 19, 2012
posted by sabotagerabbit at 9:55 AM on January 19, 2012
Huh, okay. Then I'd go through some of the other basic troubleshooting steps
- restart machine
- repair permissions [running Disk Utility]
- empty trash
I'd also do a "get info" on the word file [command-I] and make sure it's the actual application and not the shortcut to the application. Apologies if you've done all these steps. Here are some additional steps you can take from Microsoft, and here is another.
posted by jessamyn at 10:00 AM on January 19, 2012
- restart machine
- repair permissions [running Disk Utility]
- empty trash
I'd also do a "get info" on the word file [command-I] and make sure it's the actual application and not the shortcut to the application. Apologies if you've done all these steps. Here are some additional steps you can take from Microsoft, and here is another.
posted by jessamyn at 10:00 AM on January 19, 2012
Response by poster: I was able to find a copy of Office 2007 around here, but I doubt that'll help, right? I swear I'm usually not this bumbly with the technology!
posted by sabotagerabbit at 10:00 AM on January 19, 2012
posted by sabotagerabbit at 10:00 AM on January 19, 2012
Response by poster: Jessamyn, thanks so much. Other than restarting, I have not tried those things, so I will now!
posted by sabotagerabbit at 10:00 AM on January 19, 2012
posted by sabotagerabbit at 10:00 AM on January 19, 2012
Response by poster: Well, I obviously royally messed something up, because absolutely none of these things are working. Grrr! I'll just have to send them with a different computer, and try to find the disk to reinstall later.
Thanks for the help, folks.
posted by sabotagerabbit at 10:19 AM on January 19, 2012
Thanks for the help, folks.
posted by sabotagerabbit at 10:19 AM on January 19, 2012
Quite possibly the icon on the dock is pointing to the desktop since that is where you had dragged the app before putting it on the dock. IF Word opens when you click on the original app then you should be able to fix this by deleting the dock icon and open the Microsoft Office 2008 folder and drag the Word icon to the dock.
Another possibility is that he permissions to the Word App may have been changed during all of this, so compare its permissions to Excel or Powerpoint.
posted by Gungho at 10:28 AM on January 19, 2012
Another possibility is that he permissions to the Word App may have been changed during all of this, so compare its permissions to Excel or Powerpoint.
posted by Gungho at 10:28 AM on January 19, 2012
Response by poster: Word won't open at all...I'll check the permissions though. In good news, I just found the disk in the office, so I think I'll just reinstall at this point.
posted by sabotagerabbit at 10:29 AM on January 19, 2012
posted by sabotagerabbit at 10:29 AM on January 19, 2012
You can also install Office 2007 which should work just fine in a pinch. You say you were setting up new identities. Have you gone into the other existing identities on the laptop to see if Word works in them?
posted by jessamyn at 10:30 AM on January 19, 2012
posted by jessamyn at 10:30 AM on January 19, 2012
Response by poster: Yes, it's not working in any of them. Seriously, I have no idea what I did!
Of course this only happens when you're in a massive rush!
posted by sabotagerabbit at 10:31 AM on January 19, 2012
Of course this only happens when you're in a massive rush!
posted by sabotagerabbit at 10:31 AM on January 19, 2012
You'll get more informative error messages if you try running it while watching Console. Or you might get useful messages by starting Office from the command line, either via open -a or /Applications/Microsoft\ Office\ 2008/...
Btw, Mac OS X's otool -L does about what Linux's ldd does, i.e. explain the shared library situation. You're command line should resemble :
otool -L /Applications/Microsoft\ Office\ 2008/*Office*.app/Contents/*Office*
posted by jeffburdges at 10:33 AM on January 19, 2012
Btw, Mac OS X's otool -L does about what Linux's ldd does, i.e. explain the shared library situation. You're command line should resemble :
otool -L /Applications/Microsoft\ Office\ 2008/*Office*.app/Contents/*Office*
posted by jeffburdges at 10:33 AM on January 19, 2012
s|Contents|Contents/MacOS|
posted by jeffburdges at 10:36 AM on January 19, 2012
posted by jeffburdges at 10:36 AM on January 19, 2012
If you've installed macports, then pressing tab should expand command line arguments, which should help you navigate into packages. Or you could navigate there in the finder and drag it to the terminal to past the path.
posted by jeffburdges at 10:37 AM on January 19, 2012
posted by jeffburdges at 10:37 AM on January 19, 2012
Response by poster: Just wanted to update that I was able to do a clean uninstall and then reinstalled and all was well. Thanks again for all of your help, and thank the gods-of-finding-things for helping me to find the software!
posted by sabotagerabbit at 2:35 PM on January 19, 2012
posted by sabotagerabbit at 2:35 PM on January 19, 2012
Yay, you fixed it! Another option, if there was time machine running, would have been to just roll the applications folder (or the whole computer) back an hour or two.
posted by rockindata at 7:29 PM on January 19, 2012
posted by rockindata at 7:29 PM on January 19, 2012
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posted by sabotagerabbit at 9:50 AM on January 19, 2012