Re: Word looks for another server on the network

Elliott Roper:

Thanks for your response:

in article 021220060144151737%nospam@xxxxxxxxx, Elliott Roper at
nospam@xxxxxxxxx wrote on 12/1/06 5:44 PM:

In article <C19603E7.1E539%henryn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, henryn
<henryn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Folks:

Intel iMac, MacOS 10.4.8
Office 2004 fully updated

Word launches normally, and opens an empty document. I immediately choose
"Save As"... and Word tries to open a connection to another computer on the
local network: I see an alert "AFP Connection Status ... Looking up "<host
name>". There's a "cancel" button -- more about this in a moment.

Since the target machine is powered down, the connection cannot be made.
MacOS eventually gives up and puts up an alert box that says:

"Connection failed .. The server may not exist or it is not operational at
this time. Check the server name or IP address and try again."

Answering "OK" should put an end to the matter, but Word apparently tries
again and this cycle repeats for as long as I've let it go. When I get
tired of watching it, I try to hit the "cancel" button in the alert box, and
Word becomes locked, with a spinning pizza as long as I'm willing to wait,
many minutes. The only way out is a Force Quit.

If I don't try to save but look around in various menus first, I discover
that just trying to open the "Save" Preferences causes this cycle to begin
-- the contents never become visible. Work-around: if I powerup the target
server, the Save preferences become visible, but there is no reference in it
to any remote machine. Nor does the File Locations Preferences mention
anything other than the local server. All but one location is blank and the
exception is set to the current machine.

The only place I see a mention of the other machine is in the recently used
files list under the File menu. I can't see how to clear that ... even
though it shouldn't have any effect unless I choose a file on that list,
which I am not.

Oh, yes, I threw away "Normal"... No help. I tossed all MS preferences.
Didn't help.


Question 1: What is Word looking for and why?
I *think* this is a long standing Mac annoyance, rather than Word
specific. It is looking for the most recently saved-to folder, which
is... (Oh dear!)

That's an interesting suggestion.

Question 2: How do I tell Word to look on the local machine or, at least,
not to look on that particular remote machine?
Next time that machine is up, so you can get out of the loop, create a
doc and save as.. to a local folder

That is a good theory, and I appreciate the help, but this measure had no
effect. I tried it several times. After doing this, the most recently-used
folder is demonstrably on this host, not the other.

(I have not tested this suggestion recently. I think OS X started
remembering different locations for open and save somewhere about 10.2)

It appears to me that Word requests something from the other host --more
about that in a moment-- and MacOS dutifully tries make the connection.

MacOS is quite competent at dealing with connecting to network resources
that may or may not be available. When the connection cannot be made after
a certain number of attempts, MacOS tells the user and presumably informs
Word. It appears that Word refuses to take "no" for an answer, and continues
asking to be connected to the other host, over and over, indefinitely.

Word should let the OS do its job, in this case to initiate a connection to
a remote server, and assume that the OS does the job properly --
specifically, if the connection can't be made, to accept the result and
provide a fall-back. (A perfectly good one is the Documents directory of the
current user. Isn't that the one that comes up first on a new Word
installation?) Word should not keep trying to get something that is not
available.

Now a bit more about the nature of the request... Even after saving
documents to multiple places on the current server according to your
suggestion, I note that Word seems quite confused about a "default"
location.

(I'm omitting a lot of details here, describing how I booted up and shut
down the remote server numerous times, ran various experiments with Word...
I'll be glad to supply these details if you want them.)


Following your example, I decided to find an existing email on the local
machine with a .doc attachment. Opening that should reset the default to
the current host, right? For good measure, I quit Word after seeing the
attachment open, and launched it again. No effect. I tried again, this
time saving the opened attachment to my home directory, again on the local
machine. Quit and re-launched. Word still insists on defaulting Open to the
remote host.

Another theory: maybe Word is remembering that last folder from which a
file was recently opened, rather than to which a file was most recently
saved. Test this by diving into an existing directory on the local
machine, finding a valid file, and opening it. Then exiting Word and
re-launching. Aha, that seems to do it.

Now, can I operate with the remote server powered down? Quit Word, take
down the remote server, re-launch Word... Nope, Word still is stuck in an
endless loop looking for the remote server.

One final check of preferences-->File Locations. Some are unspecified. None
mention the remote server.

I'm out of ideas.

Thanks,

Henry




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