Excel and Word 2011 crash on opening

Question

I'm not sure if this is a more common issue from earlier versions of office, but with the combination of Lion and Office 2011 I am having repeated issues. For reference I am using a new Mac Air i5 with plenty of disk space and memory.
In summary, Excel and Word worked for a while, but once a file crashes for some reason then I cannot open either application at all - just stuck in the endless loop of crash on attempting open and then re-open to no effect.
I have tried several solutions including:
- complete office re-install (worked for a few days until the next crash)
- holding "shift" (no effect)
- deleting temp files and plist files following online forum advice (no effect)
Note: I am not using complex excel files with macros (etc), just dropbox copies of simple spreadsheets.
Can anyone else offer an alternative solution?

Answer 1

Hi!
I got this crash as well. followed the instructions to delete the plist file and holding the shiftkey did not work for me. The is the bit that bites...removed Office 2011 as per instructions and still only Excel does not work.
Anyone know of a solution? Seems like the latest update on my machine was a Java update from Apple.
Here is my error log.
Error Signature:
Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS
Date/Time: 2012-09-10 18:00:44 +0800
Application Name: Microsoft Excel
Application Bundle ID: com.microsoft.Excel
Application Signature: XCEL
Application Version: 14.2.3.120616
Crashed Module Name: CoreFoundation
Crashed Module Version: 550.44
Crashed Module Offset: 0x0001a2c3
Blame Module Name: CoreFoundation
Blame Module Version: 550.44
Blame Module Offset: 0x0001a2c3
Application LCID: 1033
Extra app info: Reg=en Loc=0x0409
Crashed thread: 0