I purchased microsoft office mac in 2004 and suddenly I get an error message. It won't launch. I click reopen and it does the same thing. I get a long message in the panel. It tells me it will send a report. I still can't access any microsoft item - word

Question

I purchased microsoft office mac in 2004 and suddenly I get an error message. It won't launch. I click reopen and it does the same thing. I get a long message in the panel. It tells me it will send a report. I still can't access any microsoft item - word, excel, nothing works.
I have a mac book pro 10.6.8
Thanks

Answer 1

cassidy3 wrote:
Good news is that I can access all my documents. Bad news is I had to pay $150 for it.
I spent a lot of time trying to find a solution before buying.  I did not try the launch terminal solution....
I will check back so I can find out what to do should this happen again.
More possible bad news.  If you had followed what fane_j had asked you to do you might have found out it wasn't microsoft's fault for your problem and wouldn't have had to spend $150.  Because while you may have an Office that works, fane_j was not suggesting a solution but probing for a trojan (google "flashback trojan") that has been crashing powerpc code which is what Office 2004 is.
So if you do have the trojan, while you can run a version of Office, the trojan may still be in your system since installing a version of Office isn't going to remove it.  So I'll make another request.  Launch Terminal (in your Utilities folder) and copy/paste the following line into the terminal window and hit return:
defaults read ~/.MacOSX/environment
If you see anything other than a "does not exist" error message you almost certainly do have the trojan and post the results in this thread.
The choice is yours.  You can ignore this and take the risk.  Or do what has been requested.