This is a revision to a question previously and desperately asked: I
bought Word as a stand-alone program for a new PowerBook G4 (which can
run OS 9.2 as well as Jaguar). At the moment, Word only opens once per
session. When you close and attempt to reopen it, the borders of the
window appear, seem to fill the screen for an instant, then vanish,
wraithlike, into nothingness. Hit the Word icon in the toolbar, and it
bounces once and does nothing. Try to do it through the the hard
drive, and all you get is the appearance of that instantaneous,
disappearing  border. The only way to get the program to reopen
(again, at the moment) is to restart the computer.

Friends claim this is because Word won't open in OS X unless it is
part of the Office suite of applications. One cites Macs for Dummies,
page 158: "Never move the Microsoft Word icon from its Microsoft
Office folder; if you do, it will politely decline to operate. . . ."
Other friends say, nope, they've seen it work as a stand-alone app.,
and they promise to show me how -- sometime during Christmas vacation.

Back to the original question: Can Word work in OSX without the body
armor of Office surrounding it? If so, any guesses as to why it won't
open more than once per session on my new PowerBook? (When it does
open, it also looks a mite stripped down from the Office 2000 version
of Word I know from my PC; I don't see the customary array of toolbars
and so on, so I wonder if this proves the point that it doesn't run
properly as a single application.)

I'm raising the bid a little on the previous, slightly deranged version of this
question, because I want to get this thing running one way or another
before the holidays. (I am well aware that this may be the longest
$15 question ever asked in the history of Google Answers, but hey.)

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Request for Question Clarification by googleexpert-ga on 14 Dec 2003 16:57 PST

Hi McCook,
Is Word X installed on a Different Partition?  I ask because I found a
similar-sounding problem discussed at the following link:
http://lists.adeptscience.co.uk/endnote/endnote_Jul_2003/thid_8c71f318b15afa5b1b7c12b4044ee118.html

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Clarification of Question by mccook-ga on 14 Dec 2003 20:18 PST

Thanks for the request for a clarification and the observations,
everyone. I am especially glad to hear Word works as a stand-alone
product in at least one version of X.

Because of work and travel, I won't be able to try any of these ideas
for a few days, but to move the ball forward a bit: the machine is so
new to me, I don't even know what a partition or an alias is. I guess
I can figure that out as I go forward. Googleexpert: if you want to
post an answer that includes explaining those things, together with
anything else you might learn along the way, that will satisfy me, and
you can collect.

I've removed Word from the OS and will take another stab at
reinstalling it in about a week. An enduring life lesson, I guess:
Microsoft will find a way to get you no matter where you go.

A couple of things to try - stabs in the dark really:

Repair your disk permissions.  (see http://www.techstuff.ca/archives/427.html)

If you have an alias of Word in your Dock, drag it out and it will
evaporate.  Then, drag the Word application icon back into the dock to
create a new one.

Hi McCook,

I can't offer any help with the opening/closing issues and other bugs
that you're describing, but I do know that Word X works fine as a
stand-alone application on my PowerBook running OS X 10.2.8.

I do notice that my copy of Word X is stored in a folder called
Microsoft Office X (even though I do not own and have never owned the
full Office X suite). I've never moved Word X out of that folder.

Have you tried installing any of the Office X updates from Microsoft?
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx

The Office X updates apparently work even if Word X is the only Office
application that you own.

Good luck!
juggler