Office 2008 for Mac + Spaces

[gamedaygeorge]

Hey All,

I have a pretty serious usability issue with Mac Office 2008 and OS X Spaces. Specifically, I'm running a top of the line iMac with the latest updates for OS X (10.5.4), and I have 2 x 2 Spaces defined. And when I run Mac Office 2008 (12.1.2, latest updates installed) the applications (Word, Excel, Power Point) are afflicted with a horrible problem where they lose their snap-out formatting windows between OS X spaces. This usually happens when I've switched between spaces a few times, but sometimes it does happen when I haven't.

Another related symptom seems to be that often the Office application windows (i.e. the document main body) will spontaneously get hidden below all other open windows. And often I can't get it to the foreground at all, even by clicking on the window or using expose to try and bring the window forward again. In those cases I often have to quit the Office app and re-open the document.

I don't seem to have this issue with Mac Office 2004, nor any other applications that I use on a regular basis (i.e. Photoshop). However the issue with Mac Office 2008 virtually renders the software useless. Currently I just use 2004, and only use 2008 when it happens to get launched by double clicking on a document or email attachment, and even then only until Office 2008 exhibits this behaviour again and I get frustrated. It really is unusable.

Does anybody else experience this issue? And have you found any work-around? I'm not sure who's problem this is, but I keep hoping that somebody's auto-update releases will fix the issue...

Thanks for any help, suggestions or commiseration you can offer.

George

 

[freereg]

Without knowing any programming, intuitively, the problem seems to be with the formatting bar. The bottom of the formatting bar seems to get detached from the the top and drift to other spaces. This happens almost every time you switch to a space other than the one with the Office app in it.

So, with the app being primarily in once space and its disassociated bottom part of the formatting bar in another, OS X gets confused as to which space to send you to when you reactivate your Office app and produces the bouncing around behavior and putting your active window behind others.

Here is the workaround that I found. If you set the formatting bar to collapse when inactive, it reduces to the top only of the formatting piece, thus not leaving the bottom part out to get lost in other spaces. As long as you change spaces after the bottom part of the formatting bar is collapsed, the office app behaves as it should.

Good Luck!

 

[gamedaygeorge]

Hey freereg - thanks for the response. Your workaround was helpful in reducing, but not quite eliminating the issue. And I think your diagnosis makes sense. Hopefully somebody, somewhere with the right kind of powers will take note!