[Kazot]

Michelle3,

Here's two thoughts you might try:

1) Be sure you are using Windows compatible fonts for Word 7. For sans serif, use Arial fonts, not Helvetica or that new Calibri that has shown up as the default font in Word 2008. For serif fonts, use Times New Roman. There isn't a large repertoire of fonts for most of the Word 7 for Windows out in the wild - most people don't add any other fonts. I think Microsoft has a list of Mac-PC compatible fonts.

2) Use Pages from iWork to do your simple word processing and then Export to Word. I find that works very well.

[turleymuller]

Excel is awful. It crashes constantly as well as acting real strange half the time that it's working. I hate it. Typical microsoft. It's the only Mac OS program that has every really crashed, and it does it a lot. I have 10GB of RAM and it always tells me out of memory, when I have 8GB free.

I use Fusion to run XP and windows excel. Can't go wrong there. I hope Mac Excel improves.

[wgallagher]

Michelle,

I don't know the answer but I've a couple of questions.

Could something have happened to your copy of Word? Are you on a network, say, where an IT manager may have changed something that you wouldn't be likely to notice? If that's possible, then you could try reinstalling those updates and seeing if it fixes the problem again. Then find your IT manager and growl.

Is there any chance these documents are old ones, from before your fix? I imagined the updates would fix them all but I realise when it was happening to me it was with documents I never go back to once they're emailed off.

There has apparently been another Office update in the last few days or weeks, I believe to fix something in Entourage rather than Word. I'd install that so you're at least running the latest versions of everything.

And the answer about keeping the updates around is usually no: once they're installed, they're done. But I keep mine - well, okay, I chiefly keep them because I'm too disorganised to throw them away, but there are occasions when I've had to reinstall all of Office and then it was handy to have the latest updates nearby. But most major updates include the previous updates within them so I'm probably wasting my time there.

Sorry I can't be any more use: I was so chuffed that I thought I knew the answer to a problem last time. Ah, well. Good luck with it; I'd like to know if you get it solved.

William