Office X and Tiger Upgrade
 

Hi all. I just upgraded to Tiger and now I am having a problem with Microsoft Word. The text of everything I write is super, super bright and slightly blurry. If I run the cursor over it, it will return to normal, but only temporarily. Any thoughts? All help will be greatly appreciated. Feel free to email me directly. Thanks in advance.

You mentioned Office 2001 - doesn't that run under Classic?
If so, I will move this to the Classic section of the forums.

[edit]
For the benefit of future readers I note that the original thread title mentioned Office 2001 but this was an error. The title has now been corrected to refer to Office X instead.
Hence you should ignore the confusion of the first several posts.
[/edit]

Check the OS X preferences and MS Word preferences to be sure that you don't have font-smooting enabled in both places. Or that you have an OS 9 extension that does font smoothing.

Thanks for your help.

No, Office 2001 runs under OS X.

When I turned off text smoothing for size 12 and under in the General preferences, the text in my other programs began to look terrible. So I turned off "Enable quartz text viewing." in Word preferences. That made it a bit better, but the text in a Word document is still overly bright and a bit blurry.
Any other ideas?

I think you'll find that it is running under the "Classic" environment within OS X. Office 2001 is indeed a "Classic" application - I checked on this Microsoft page:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/272642
where it says the system requirements are:
Hence I will move this thread to the Classic section of the forums.

My apologies
 

It is Office v. X for Mac,

Just for chronology, Office 2001 is the prior version to Office V.x, and has Classic apps. Office V.x is the first Office to run under OS X.

So, uh.. now which one are we talking about that has issue then?

Okay then I'll move this thread back to the Applications section and I'll edit the thread title to say "Office X" instead of "Office 2001".

And can we assume that you are on the latest version of Tiger (10.4.3) ?
And please tell us your exact model of Mac.

If you can take a screen shot showing the problem, it would increase the likelihood that someone will guess what is going wrong. (Attach it using the "Manage Attachments" button at the bottom when you reply)

Screenshot
 

Yes, I'm using Tiger 10.4.3. I work on a flat screen iMac.

Machine Name: iMac
Machine Model: PowerMac4,2
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (2.1)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 700 MHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 256 KB
Memory: 640 MB
Bus Speed: 100 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.4.0f1

I've attached a screen shot of the problem.

Umm - it still seems to be the wrong file. I'm getting "ScreenshotWord.doc" which is a Word document with words in it! (no images)

You can take a screenshot by holding down the Shift + Apple keys and then pressing the 4 key. Attach it as an image - not as a Word document - many people don't have Word.

I appreciate your patience.
 

Here is the screen shot

JKG, I am running Office X on 10.4.3 and it is quite stable. Be sure you have applied the 10.1.6 update.http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx#OfficeX

10.4 is fussy about some older fonts and Office itself is a bit fussy, so when in doubt just drag ~/library/fonts to the desktop and test with default system fonts.

From the screen shot it looks as if you are just getting some bleed from the reversed type, how does it print?

-mj

Using the Word doc that you posted earlier, I changed the background colour and font colour to match what you showed.
Here are two screen shots showing that document in Word. The first one is with "Quartz smoothing" enabled (checked) in Word's preferences. The second is with "Quartz smoothing" disabled.
You will see that the second one looks similar to what you showed. So maybe you just need to turn on "Quartz smoothing" in Word's preferences.

It is much worse with Quartz smoothing on. I have downloaded the Office update that MacJack suggested. Still no luck.

I have Office X on my iBook running 10.4.3. You should be able to match what I showed above.
I have "Quartz smoothing" enabled in Word preferences and "Display Profile" set to "Color LCD" in the Display section of System Preferences and "Font smoothing style" set to "Automatic - best for main display" in the Appearances section. (Text smoothing turned off for font sizes 8 and smaller)

[edit]
I forgot to say that my colour resolution (Displays prefs) is set to "millions of colors".
[/edit]

JKG, quartz_smoothing_on.png is much crisper on my display, iMac 17" FP.

MSW>> Prefs>> "enable quartz text smoothing".

System Prefs >>Colors "millions". Display set to "iMac".

System Prefs >> Appearance
Font smoothing style: "Medium - best for flat panel"
"Turn off text smoothing for font sizes "8" and smaller.
However, if set to "4" and smaller then quartz_smoothing_off.png is better.

As Hayne, suggests be sure that text smoothing is set to "8".

-mj

Here are 3 different versions. They are variations of :

(system pref) font smoothing style
(system pref)turn off text smoothing for sizes XX or smaller
(system pref)LCD display
(Word pref) enable quartz smoothing

I obviously haven't tried every combination. Thoughts?

And again, I really appreciate your help.

You should try the standard troubleshooting suggestions:
http://www.apple.com/support/mac101/ (see the "My Mac needs help" section)
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...04011205473937
http://forums.osxfaq.com/viewtopic.php?t=7269
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/faqs.html

In particular, be sure to try logging in as a different user to see if the problem exists there. (Create a new user via the Accounts preference panel if you only have the one user account so far.)

And try to remember if you might have installed some utility or "haxie", etc that has system-wide effect.
You might try booting in Safe mode (hold down Shift after you hear the chime) to see if the problem occurs there.

When I logged in as another user, the problem went away. When I did booted in safe mode and logged in to my account, the problem returned. I have repaired permissions.

Should I trash the Word preferences?

generic answer for user-specific problems
 

You have determined that the problem is only with the one user account.
The problem thus is almost certainly due to something under your home folder.
And it likely is something under ~/Library
( ~ = your home folder)
The most likely thing is a bad preference file under ~/Library/Preferences
You could start by removing the preference files for the apps you are having trouble with.
If the problem persists, you need to narrow the problem down - you could start by moving (via drag & drop) the whole "Preferences" folder that is under ~/Library to the Desktop, then log out and log in again. A default copy of the Preferences folder will have been recreated. Does that improve things? If so, you could use a divide & conquer approach to figure out which of the preference files is causing the problem - move half of the preference files back into the Preferences folder, log out & in again, etc.

If the problem persists, try the same thing with the other sub-folders of ~/Library. E.g. with ~/Library/Caches, ~/Library/InputManagers, ~/Library/Fonts, ~/Library/PreferencePanes, ~/Library/Application Support, contents of ~/Desktop, etc.
Also remove any files owned by your user in /Library/Caches (the Library folder at the top-level of the drive)

After playing around with the preferences as you suggested, I realized something. I do have the problem when I log in as another user. The reason I didn't see that is that when I log in as me, Word has a blue background with white writing (my preference).

When I log in as someone else, there is a white background and black writing. The entire problem is so much less pronounced in that circumstance. Logging in as someone else, I changed the prefs to blue background, and there was the problem, as bad as ever.

Would it make sense to uninstall Office and reinstall a fresh copy?

Again, I appreciate your help and patience.

Anyone else have ideas?

It isn't clear if you have reproduced the preference settings that I showed above - they work for me to produce the first of the two screen captures I showed (which is I presume what you want).
Your post where you posted 3 images was not clear about what your settings were - you didn't use enough words or else not precise enough words.
Maybe try again with the preferences.
Otherwise try it when booted in Safe mode, etc.
Last resort is to reinstall OS X.
Second last resort is to reinstall Office.

Sorry if I wasn't clear before. I had the preference settings the way you have suggested. It definitely is worse with "enable quartz smoothing" turned on.

When I logged out and went back in under a different user, the problem is still there. I reinstalled Office for the Mac and that didn't help. I reinstalled Tiger and that didn't help.

The attachments show the current settings and the result, which is the best I can get it. I am at my wit's end.

I'll bet it is something simple. Wish I knew. Any other ideas?

You should avoid (at least for the moment) the use of terms like "better" and "worse" and just try to see if you can reproduce the results that I show in my post above. Use the same document and same background & font colours (which I chose to match your initial colours).

Picture 1 is what it looks like with "Quartz smoothing" enabled in Word preferences and "Display Profile" set to iMac (my only other choices are Generic RGB and sRGB), color resolution (Displays prefs) set to "millions of colors", "Font smoothing style" set to "Automatic - best for main display" and Text smoothing turned off for font sizes 8 and smaller)

Picture 2 is what it looks like after I've highlighted it and released the cursor. Unfortunately, if I scroll down and back it quickly returns to look like Picture 1.