Some of this has been discussed previously, but there have been some updates to both Word 2008 and Bookends.
What is the current status of our ability to unscan and scan properly in Word 2008?
I have encountered odd problems and don't want to waste a lot of time reentering citations if there is a fairly fundamental problem. In the past, Jon has recommended not scanning until the very end, but that is not practical for me in this case (besides which, I like seeing things from time to time in "final" form, even though there will be subsequent revision). I unscan/scan routinely in Mellel, but I'm new to Word 2008 this week, and using a document carried over from 2004 that was "complete," but must now be revised.
My document has citation in text, footnotes, and endnotes. When I have tried unscanning, only some of the grayed items revert to { }. When I scan, only some of the items in { } are "read."
Word 2008 Scan and Unscan
Re: Word 2008 Scan and Unscan
Unscanning Word 2008 files has been greatly improved, and I'm not aware of any problems with it at this time. There may be special cases where hidden citations are not recognized, but if you remove them and replace them with a new temporary citation I expect that will fix it. In any case, if you have examples where hidden citations aren't being recognized, you can send them to me and I'll see what the problem is.
Jon
Sonny Software
Jon
Sonny Software
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Dixiedog
Re: Word 2008 Scan and Unscan
I solved the problem, but it took hours. Since I encountered a "hard crash" of Word and Bookends, and because it was such a tedious business, let me describe the case so that others may avoid it. My impression is that there was also a problem with Bookends, and an unpleasant interaction with Word 2008 that might bear fixing, but I can't judge that well. The document's history took it into an obscure corner of the case space.
CONTEXT: I had prepared a manuscript originally in Mellel, with a bibliography entered with Bookends. Upon getting back to the manuscript, I moved it into Word 2004 (via rtf) and then into Word 2008, where I did some additional writing and citing. I could not get scan and unscan to work properly: some cites in curly brackets were ignored and, upon unscan, some grayed items remained in permanent form. Very puzzling. I reentered all the citations from scratch (yes, that was probably dumb). Same problem. If I scanned an rtf of the document, the bibliography seemed fine (I can't swear to it being complete, but it seemed so), but the curly-bracketed items remained in curly brackets.
THE PATH OF DISCOVERY: In some instances of an attempted scan (perhaps all, but with the window hidden) I would get an unmatched-citation error. Unfortunately, I didn't see this early or it would have saved time. The error was "Low Marginal High". As soon as I saw this, I guessed that the problem arose because at some point in the history of the document, this phrase appeared in set notation: {Low, Marginal, High}. When I moved the document into Word 2004 or Word 2008, I deleted the brackets, knowing that those would cause trouble. A search for { and } revealed no instances of either item being present except where they should be. A search for Low Marginal High revealed nothing (even using a copy and paste of the unmatched-citation error). I could not see any such string visually. Eventually, I found a string "Low, Marginal, High" that "grayed" when clicked. Aha, I thought. So I deleted that whole item and retyped. Eventually I found another such string, but it was not grayed. Still, I eventually deleted and retyped it. None of this changed results.
I checked out portions of the 40 page document: the first half, the second half, the third quarter, and so on, until the problem was localized to page 21. That was actually when I found the ungrayed string and retyped. However, as mentioned above, the problem persisted. Only when I deleted a much longer chunk (ten words?) did the problem resolve.
NASTY NASTY CRASH
I then tried making the correction in the full document and, upon trying to scan, I got the hard crash mentioned above (I had one of those yesterday as well). Word refused to open. Scary. I dumped preference files (not entirely trivial, since there are a number of such files that can be the problem), restarted the machine, and found that all was well. I then went to a slightly earlier draft, made the corrections, and successfuly scanned. I assume, then, that all is now well. I then wrote this report.
DIAGNOSIS.
Under some circumstances, not all of Bookends' markings remain visible and therefore can't easily be found. These may be mere fragments of initial markings. There may be a way to "clean" the document without losing things that one wants to retain, but I don't know how. If there isn't such a mechanism, there should be. If there is, then I'm dumb and didn't catch it in the manual. Recall that I had rtf'd earlier.
Under some obscure circumstances, trying to scan can break Word 2008. That seemed to happen during the unscan part of the process. A speculation is that I hadn't deleted all of a marked segment (not grayed, however), and that Bookends or Word coughed when Bookends tried to find the full segment.
GENERAL LAMENT
Bugs exist, interactions occur, and we get used to them as occasional problems that get resolved. However, OS X was supposed to end the era of frequent crashes (remember the early enthusiasm and how long we would go without restarting?). I have encountered many, many hangs and crashes in recent weeks with various Mac programs involving FileVault, VirusBarrier, Mail, Word 2004, PowerPoint 2004, Word 2008, TimeMachine Finder, Firefox, and Bookends. There has been not a single problem, but a bunch of different ones. It seems to me that Apple has lost control, provided too much freedom, or provided poor guidance. The current Bookends problem was just one of many.
CONTEXT: I had prepared a manuscript originally in Mellel, with a bibliography entered with Bookends. Upon getting back to the manuscript, I moved it into Word 2004 (via rtf) and then into Word 2008, where I did some additional writing and citing. I could not get scan and unscan to work properly: some cites in curly brackets were ignored and, upon unscan, some grayed items remained in permanent form. Very puzzling. I reentered all the citations from scratch (yes, that was probably dumb). Same problem. If I scanned an rtf of the document, the bibliography seemed fine (I can't swear to it being complete, but it seemed so), but the curly-bracketed items remained in curly brackets.
THE PATH OF DISCOVERY: In some instances of an attempted scan (perhaps all, but with the window hidden) I would get an unmatched-citation error. Unfortunately, I didn't see this early or it would have saved time. The error was "Low Marginal High". As soon as I saw this, I guessed that the problem arose because at some point in the history of the document, this phrase appeared in set notation: {Low, Marginal, High}. When I moved the document into Word 2004 or Word 2008, I deleted the brackets, knowing that those would cause trouble. A search for { and } revealed no instances of either item being present except where they should be. A search for Low Marginal High revealed nothing (even using a copy and paste of the unmatched-citation error). I could not see any such string visually. Eventually, I found a string "Low, Marginal, High" that "grayed" when clicked. Aha, I thought. So I deleted that whole item and retyped. Eventually I found another such string, but it was not grayed. Still, I eventually deleted and retyped it. None of this changed results.
I checked out portions of the 40 page document: the first half, the second half, the third quarter, and so on, until the problem was localized to page 21. That was actually when I found the ungrayed string and retyped. However, as mentioned above, the problem persisted. Only when I deleted a much longer chunk (ten words?) did the problem resolve.
NASTY NASTY CRASH
I then tried making the correction in the full document and, upon trying to scan, I got the hard crash mentioned above (I had one of those yesterday as well). Word refused to open. Scary. I dumped preference files (not entirely trivial, since there are a number of such files that can be the problem), restarted the machine, and found that all was well. I then went to a slightly earlier draft, made the corrections, and successfuly scanned. I assume, then, that all is now well. I then wrote this report.
DIAGNOSIS.
Under some circumstances, not all of Bookends' markings remain visible and therefore can't easily be found. These may be mere fragments of initial markings. There may be a way to "clean" the document without losing things that one wants to retain, but I don't know how. If there isn't such a mechanism, there should be. If there is, then I'm dumb and didn't catch it in the manual. Recall that I had rtf'd earlier.
Under some obscure circumstances, trying to scan can break Word 2008. That seemed to happen during the unscan part of the process. A speculation is that I hadn't deleted all of a marked segment (not grayed, however), and that Bookends or Word coughed when Bookends tried to find the full segment.
GENERAL LAMENT
Bugs exist, interactions occur, and we get used to them as occasional problems that get resolved. However, OS X was supposed to end the era of frequent crashes (remember the early enthusiasm and how long we would go without restarting?). I have encountered many, many hangs and crashes in recent weeks with various Mac programs involving FileVault, VirusBarrier, Mail, Word 2004, PowerPoint 2004, Word 2008, TimeMachine Finder, Firefox, and Bookends. There has been not a single problem, but a bunch of different ones. It seems to me that Apple has lost control, provided too much freedom, or provided poor guidance. The current Bookends problem was just one of many.
Re: Word 2008 Scan and Unscan
Hi,
I don't follow exactly what might have occurred, but be aware that this "gray" text means that there is a hidden field -- that's where Bookends stores the original citation, which enables unscanning to work. If one or more of these hidden fields is corrupted, they won't be unscanned. Deleting and replacing them does the trick.
Second, you are laboring under a misapprehension. Mac OS X was never supposed to prevent programs from crashing. What it was supposed to do was prevent a program crash from bringing down the whole system. And Apple succeeded brilliantly. It is very rare that a crash hangs or disables Mac OS X. Mac OS X also eliminated (mostly) conflicts caused by extensions, which were pernicious and difficult to track down. As for individual app crashes, they happen and are no fault of Apple's.
Finally, if you are seeing lots of app all of a sudden misbehave, it's likely that there is some fundamental issue with your system. Something like a bad memory chip can do this. There is also the possibility that something is corrupted in Mac OS X -- you might try a clean reinstall. Perhaps others will have suggestions as well.
Jon
Sonny Software
I don't follow exactly what might have occurred, but be aware that this "gray" text means that there is a hidden field -- that's where Bookends stores the original citation, which enables unscanning to work. If one or more of these hidden fields is corrupted, they won't be unscanned. Deleting and replacing them does the trick.
Second, you are laboring under a misapprehension. Mac OS X was never supposed to prevent programs from crashing. What it was supposed to do was prevent a program crash from bringing down the whole system. And Apple succeeded brilliantly. It is very rare that a crash hangs or disables Mac OS X. Mac OS X also eliminated (mostly) conflicts caused by extensions, which were pernicious and difficult to track down. As for individual app crashes, they happen and are no fault of Apple's.
Finally, if you are seeing lots of app all of a sudden misbehave, it's likely that there is some fundamental issue with your system. Something like a bad memory chip can do this. There is also the possibility that something is corrupted in Mac OS X -- you might try a clean reinstall. Perhaps others will have suggestions as well.
Jon
Sonny Software
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Dixiedog
Re: Word 2008 Scan and Unscan
Jon
On the first item, I'm sure that the hidden field was the problem as you say. And, eventually, I deleted and retyped enough so that whatever was there was cleaned out. However, I had no way to know that there was such a hidden field. There was no graying when I clicked in or around the set of words in question, and eventual success came only after deleting a number of earlier and later words as well. IF there is a way to make such fields show up, or to clean them all out, that would be useful. Perhaps copying all but the last paragraph sign into a fresh document, or saving as to html? These are methods used with corrupted Word files, but I really don't know what magic is accomplished, nor whether they have any relationship to the issue I encountered.
I wish that you were right about current OS X, but--despite my misstatement, which you corrected--I meant system crashes, not just crashes of individual programs. I have probably had to do powered restarts more often over the last month or so than over the previous several years. Some programs hang and one cannot do a Force Quit or even a kill processes with Activity monitor. I know others who have had similar problems. I believe that the primary culprits are anti-virus software and, within that genre, the continual-scan features . This may only be in interaction with relatively less usual features such as FileVault and TimeMachine. As for my recent problem with Bookends and Word 2008, there was again not a simple crash of a program, but something that required a restart. If I recall the sequence, Word "failed to respond," then Firefox, then Finder, then... When that kind of thing starts to occur, in my experience, there is no recourse.
You're right that my particular computer might be a reasonable thing to suspect, but the Leopard installation is new and the hardware and software tests have looked fine. Nonetheless, I will do one of the very lengthy hardware checks, since your comment reminded me that RAM problems sometimes don't show up easily. Regrettably, I'm 95% certain that this is not the problem (as is my company's technical guy for Mac support, since he's been encountering other instances).
On the first item, I'm sure that the hidden field was the problem as you say. And, eventually, I deleted and retyped enough so that whatever was there was cleaned out. However, I had no way to know that there was such a hidden field. There was no graying when I clicked in or around the set of words in question, and eventual success came only after deleting a number of earlier and later words as well. IF there is a way to make such fields show up, or to clean them all out, that would be useful. Perhaps copying all but the last paragraph sign into a fresh document, or saving as to html? These are methods used with corrupted Word files, but I really don't know what magic is accomplished, nor whether they have any relationship to the issue I encountered.
I wish that you were right about current OS X, but--despite my misstatement, which you corrected--I meant system crashes, not just crashes of individual programs. I have probably had to do powered restarts more often over the last month or so than over the previous several years. Some programs hang and one cannot do a Force Quit or even a kill processes with Activity monitor. I know others who have had similar problems. I believe that the primary culprits are anti-virus software and, within that genre, the continual-scan features . This may only be in interaction with relatively less usual features such as FileVault and TimeMachine. As for my recent problem with Bookends and Word 2008, there was again not a simple crash of a program, but something that required a restart. If I recall the sequence, Word "failed to respond," then Firefox, then Finder, then... When that kind of thing starts to occur, in my experience, there is no recourse.
You're right that my particular computer might be a reasonable thing to suspect, but the Leopard installation is new and the hardware and software tests have looked fine. Nonetheless, I will do one of the very lengthy hardware checks, since your comment reminded me that RAM problems sometimes don't show up easily. Regrettably, I'm 95% certain that this is not the problem (as is my company's technical guy for Mac support, since he's been encountering other instances).
Re: Word 2008 Scan and Unscan
Hi,
In Word, just do a Command-A. That selects all text, and any hidden fields will show up in a darker gray than the usual selection color.
FYI, I too have had to restart my Mac more often than in the past (perhaps twice in the last month). It occurred after getting a Time Capsule and activating Time Machine, so I'm suspicious of that. It's still rare enough that it's not really a problem for me, but I have noticed it. No doubt we'll have more 0.1 upgrades from Apple to install...
Jon
Sonny Software
In Word, just do a Command-A. That selects all text, and any hidden fields will show up in a darker gray than the usual selection color.
FYI, I too have had to restart my Mac more often than in the past (perhaps twice in the last month). It occurred after getting a Time Capsule and activating Time Machine, so I'm suspicious of that. It's still rare enough that it's not really a problem for me, but I have noticed it. No doubt we'll have more 0.1 upgrades from Apple to install...
Jon
Sonny Software
Re: Word 2008 Scan and Unscan
You can show all fields by activating the corresponding preference in Word: Preferences > View > Field shading > Alwayspkdavis wrote:There was no graying when I clicked in or around the set of words in question
There may be good reasons for having anti-virus software installed on your mac (for example if you act as an intermediary who often forwards e-mail from third parties to others using windows systems), but I would recommend getting rid of the anti-virus software. At least until there are real viruses for the Mac, they seem to cause more trouble than relief…pkdavis wrote:I believe that the primary culprits are anti-virus software and, within that genre, the continual-scan features.
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Dixiedog
Re: Word 2008 Scan and Unscan
Responding to Ozean
Rhanks. I had never noticed that preference. CMD-A did not do the job in this case. The document was apparently corrupted according to Jon, to whom I sent relevant excerpts.
As for anti-virus stuff, based on my experience, I agree with you. However, within organizations, there is a felt need to put "protections' on everything.
Rhanks. I had never noticed that preference. CMD-A did not do the job in this case. The document was apparently corrupted according to Jon, to whom I sent relevant excerpts.
As for anti-virus stuff, based on my experience, I agree with you. However, within organizations, there is a felt need to put "protections' on everything.
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pablitosan
- Posts: 12
- Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2005 9:27 pm
Re: Word 2008 Scan and Unscan
FYI, I have just experienced an identical problem. Attempting to scan a long document with many images, captions, and cross-references, Word crashes during Bookends "unscanning document" phase. If I restart and repeat the process several times, other apps begin to fail as well, until the whole computer is essentially frozen and I have to force-restart.
I'm looking at the field codes now to see if I can find a problem, but so far no luck. I'll let you know if I figure it out.
- Paul
I'm looking at the field codes now to see if I can find a problem, but so far no luck. I'll let you know if I figure it out.
- Paul
Re: Word 2008 Scan and Unscan
Please read this (it's also included in the Read Me):
http://www.sonnysoftware.com/Issues/issues.html
Either save as RTF and scan that, or take out some of the complex images, scan, and add them back.
Jon
Sonny Software
http://www.sonnysoftware.com/Issues/issues.html
Either save as RTF and scan that, or take out some of the complex images, scan, and add them back.
Jon
Sonny Software
Re: Word 2008 Scan and Unscan
Another data point. I had a moderate document (less than 100 pages) and was unable to scan/unscan. Work would gobble up 100% of cpu while the unscanning effort would go on interminably.
As Jon suggested, I was able to scan the rtf file and could have quit there.
To "fix" the problem, however, so that I could avoid going into rtf routinely. I replaced all of the graphics with smaller .png files. I clicked on each graphic in the document, used CTRL-Save as Picture to png, and then replaced the original graphic with the png. The original graphnics included a bunch that had origins in PowerPoint and Excel. Anyway, this process reduced the size of the rtf file from 250 MB to about 20 MB; the Word file was only about 5 MB. After the reduction, I am able to unscan and scan with Word 2008 open again.
This business has been a royal pain. I was unaware of the graphics issues until this go-round. Microsoft needs to do things differently,
As Jon suggested, I was able to scan the rtf file and could have quit there.
To "fix" the problem, however, so that I could avoid going into rtf routinely. I replaced all of the graphics with smaller .png files. I clicked on each graphic in the document, used CTRL-Save as Picture to png, and then replaced the original graphic with the png. The original graphnics included a bunch that had origins in PowerPoint and Excel. Anyway, this process reduced the size of the rtf file from 250 MB to about 20 MB; the Word file was only about 5 MB. After the reduction, I am able to unscan and scan with Word 2008 open again.
This business has been a royal pain. I was unaware of the graphics issues until this go-round. Microsoft needs to do things differently,
Re: Word 2008 Scan and Unscan
Hi,
It's much worse in Word 2008 than 2004 (although other things are better). FWIW, I have found that simply passing the graphic through TextEdit (a Copy -> Paste, Copy -> Paste roundtrip) often takes care of it without apparent loss of resolution. This is pretty quick.
Also, now that Bookends can scan/rescan Word RTF files, there's less need to scan from within Word (although it is still obviously more convenient).
Jon
Sonny Software
It's much worse in Word 2008 than 2004 (although other things are better). FWIW, I have found that simply passing the graphic through TextEdit (a Copy -> Paste, Copy -> Paste roundtrip) often takes care of it without apparent loss of resolution. This is pretty quick.
Also, now that Bookends can scan/rescan Word RTF files, there's less need to scan from within Word (although it is still obviously more convenient).
Jon
Sonny Software
Re: Word 2008 Scan and Unscan
Jon, I have not been able to consistently copy and paste from TextEdit. Right now, for example, I am looking at a TextEdit document with a single figure, copied from PowerPoint. If I use CMD-C, move over to a fresh Word document, and use CMD-V, nothing happens. Similarly, with CMD-X and CMD-V. Similarly, if while in TextEdit I select all and use menu commands for copy and paste: nothing copies over. There is something trivial that I'm not doing, I'm sure. But that is why I used the more circuitous route.
Re: Word 2008 Scan and Unscan
You have made the cardinal error of copying images from PowerPoint. MS uses it's own proprietary image structures that do not play well with others. If you stick with real image generation apps (including Keynote, which I've switched to from PP) you will run into a lot fewer problems.
Jon
Sonny Software
Jon
Sonny Software
Re: Word 2008 Scan and Unscan
When I try to scan a Word for Mac 2008 document, I receive the following message:
"Bookends can't scan a Microsoft Word File. Scan the document from within Word."
I'm not sure how to do this. Can anyone advise?
Thanks.
"Bookends can't scan a Microsoft Word File. Scan the document from within Word."
I'm not sure how to do this. Can anyone advise?
Thanks.