Appleworks problem

B

bethmac

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I have an eMac OS X v10.3.9. I cannot open Appleworks. When I try I get two white boxes: one is the Button Bar the other is titled "starting points", no content in the boxes. At this point I have to force quit Appleworks to get out of it. Two other users who log in on their own "standard" accounts (same computer) have no trouble opening and using Appleworks. Can anyone help me fix this? Thank you.
 
Since it works with your other user accounts, I guess the problem must be with some corrupt preferences files. In your Home folder, open the Library, and then open the Preferences folder. Try dragging the "AppleWorks" folder and the "com.apple.appleworks.plist" file to the desktop, and relaunching AppleWorks. Hopefully that will fix the problem.
 
Thank you. I moved the Appleworks file and the "com.apple.appleworks.plist" file to my desktop. I tried starting Appleworks. I now do get the Appleworks start up box which says "Appleworks" and starts with the words at the bottom "Building fonts..." (or something close to that), but it only lasts a split second and I am again left with the blank "starting points" box and the need to force quit. The only other thing I noticed is that after moving the folder and file and trying to start Appleworks, an Appleworks folder is back in Preferences... a copy? The folder also now exists on my desktop. Do you have any other ideas? Thanks again.
 
It's normal to see new preferences files/folders appear. It should create new ones if there's nothing already there, so don't worry about that.

I'm not sure what else it could be. The only other idea I have off the top of my head is that maybe you have some fonts installed in the "Fonts" folder of your Home folder's Library. If there's anything in that folder (by default there's not), try dragging it to the desktop like with the prefs and reloading AppleWorks.
 
Sounds as if you have a damaged font in you home folder ~/Library/Fonts or a corrupted font cache in your user account. Font Book can check for damaged or duplicated fonts and Cocktail or Onyx can clear out the cache files.

As for the duplicated preference folders, all OS X applications check the ~/Library/Preferences folder for their .plist (preference) file or folder and files when they are launched. If none is found the automatically create new preference files with default values. So when AppleWorks started up and did not find its plists in the expected place, it immediately created new ones.
 
I just thought of one other possibility. If Application Program Enhancer (APE) is running in the original user account that could account for the problems with AppleWorks too. If you have an application such as Audio HiJack that is dependent on APE, try temporarily disabling APE in System Preferences > APE and rebooting.
 
Thank you for your ideas. I do not think I am running APE. I do not see it in system preferences. I have tried dragging various Appleworks folders, font folders, ".plists", etc to the desktop and restarting with no luck. I resolved all duplicate fonts using Font Book. I reinstalled the eMac Applications using the original CD and as a last resort, as per help from the apple.com website, I dragged the whole Preferences folder from my Library to the desktop. Nothing has worked. I have restarted after each change. I am stymied, but that's not hard to do! Do I now make a trip to my local Apple center? How can I tell if a font or other preference is corrupted? Can I disable all fonts in some way (and get them back again!)? Thanks again for all of your help.
 
bethmac said:
How can I tell if a font or other preference is corrupted? Can I disable all fonts in some way (and get them back again!)? Thanks again for all of your help.
Click to expand...
Open Font book and select all your fonts the on the file menu select Validate font to see if any of them are corrupted.

Preferential Treatment can check your preference files to be sure they are correctly formatted, but you can still have an invalid node or argument that would render the plist problematic so even if it says no problems were found there may still be corrupted preference files, but not vice-versa. If you haven't tried it before, you might delete com.apple.SystemUIServer.plist and see if that solves the problem.

You can drag the fonts out of the font folders to disable them, but that might also disable OS X at the same time, so that is not advisable unless you are reasonably expert. Apple Knowledge Base article 25710 lists the required fonts and where they should be located. Disabling one of those can make the system or some applications unusable.
 
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