Re: Serious Word Document Problems - Please, PLEASE Help! :(

John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh] wrote:

As Jeff pointed out, it's usually worth advising non-technical users to run
the installer if there is one -- it guarantees that any previous versions
are correctly cleaned up and the files are added with the correct
permissions.



Lets just say that it "attempts" to guatantee it :-)

In any event, using the applications installer/deinstaller tends to provide the greatest chance of success (unless of course it was written by Epson :-S )


Doing a drag-and-drop "Install" won't fix this, because the Pref files do
not exist on the distribution media. But doing what you recommend,
restoring from a backup, WOULD fix the problem PROVIDED that your backup
included the Pref files.


AND provided that you do a formal restore from the backup and NOT just a copy (e.g., a drag and drop) from the backup media when using any type of unix based file system such as OS X. When you copy or just drag and drop, the ownership and access permissions of the final files will usually be those of the person doing the restore instead of what they were when they were originally backed up. If the application was originally installed with a decent installer that had a receipts file for it, running a fix permissions after restoring the files might correct the ownership and permission problems (and I emphasize the MIGHT since I have seen installers that still foul this up). If there was no reciepts file, then all bets are off.

In the original Mac OS, root = admin = common user. This is no longer the case in OSX, that is why it is better for security. However, you now have to account for these differences. Simple copying or drag and drops between these ownership domains will NOT usually produce the results that are desired.


--
Jeff Wiseman
to reply, just remove ALLTHESPAM
.

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