A Funky Pages '08 Bug, The Funky Fix, and Why discussions.apple.com Rules
August 26, 2007 - 9:34am — Todd Howard
I finally got iWork '08 installed, and I'm honestly looking forward to phasing Mac Office out of my daily life in favor of iWork. Especially because I am still on Office: X, which is from when... 2001? I started working on my first document, and when I went to save out my word format document - after smiling at the simplicity of the Export dialog box - I got a nice little "unknown error". Can't save the document, can't tell you why, do not pass go, do not collect $200 or get your $79 back. Boo.
Not to be thwarted, I immediately went to Safari and tapped in "dis" [which autofills discussions.apple.com for me since I go there all the time.] If you have never been there and you use Apple software or hardware anywhere in your work or personal life, you really ought to check it out. Get it bookmarked, and then you can use this mnemonic: any time your Apple software or hardware "disses" you, you can type "dis" in your web browser, and you'll be delivered to the promised land (this is my promise to you.)
I clicked on the iWork category (Apple support discussions are really nicely categorized for easy searching), and then the iWork '08 sub category, and I searched on "unknown error word" and the top hit had exactly three things: One post, one reply, and one fix, waiting to be plucked, eaten and then blogged about if you take my meaning. Check out the thread. When I just went there to get the link, I see that a bunch of other people have been having the exact same problem.
The replying poster myklread wrote this: "By activating all four instances of Japanese font Hiragino, I can now successfully export to Word. (Go figure!)"
Following his simple and singular instruction, I launched Font Book from my Applications directory, clicked on the "Japanese" font family on the left, and sure enough, there were four instances of a font I had disabled months ago. I often go into Font Book after a new OS X install and disable any fonts that I know I won't ever be using, like Japanese, Chinese and Korean fonts, thinking that it will speed up app launching and the displaying of font menus. All four of my Hiragino faces were indeed disabled, so I enabled them, command-tabbed back to Pages '08, did a File --> Export (Word) and holy crap if it didn't just plain work.
I really want to know how myklread figured that out. I mean... that's crazy. Furthermore - how utterly sweet that I was able to do a three word search on a website that came up by me typing 3 letters into my URL bar, and the first hit had my exact problem, and that the most arcane of fixes right there ready to be gleaned by anyone who happened by. discussions.apple.com rules.
I finally got iWork '08 installed, and I'm honestly looking forward to phasing Mac Office out of my daily life in favor of iWork. Especially because I am still on Office: X, which is from when... 2001? I started working on my first document, and when I went to save out my word format document - after smiling at the simplicity of the Export dialog box - I got a nice little "unknown error". Can't save the document, can't tell you why, do not pass go, do not collect $200 or get your $79 back. Boo.
Not to be thwarted, I immediately went to Safari and tapped in "dis" [which autofills discussions.apple.com for me since I go there all the time.] If you have never been there and you use Apple software or hardware anywhere in your work or personal life, you really ought to check it out. Get it bookmarked, and then you can use this mnemonic: any time your Apple software or hardware "disses" you, you can type "dis" in your web browser, and you'll be delivered to the promised land (this is my promise to you.)
I clicked on the iWork category (Apple support discussions are really nicely categorized for easy searching), and then the iWork '08 sub category, and I searched on "unknown error word" and the top hit had exactly three things: One post, one reply, and one fix, waiting to be plucked, eaten and then blogged about if you take my meaning. Check out the thread. When I just went there to get the link, I see that a bunch of other people have been having the exact same problem.
The replying poster myklread wrote this: "By activating all four instances of Japanese font Hiragino, I can now successfully export to Word. (Go figure!)"
Following his simple and singular instruction, I launched Font Book from my Applications directory, clicked on the "Japanese" font family on the left, and sure enough, there were four instances of a font I had disabled months ago. I often go into Font Book after a new OS X install and disable any fonts that I know I won't ever be using, like Japanese, Chinese and Korean fonts, thinking that it will speed up app launching and the displaying of font menus. All four of my Hiragino faces were indeed disabled, so I enabled them, command-tabbed back to Pages '08, did a File --> Export (Word) and holy crap if it didn't just plain work.
I really want to know how myklread figured that out. I mean... that's crazy. Furthermore - how utterly sweet that I was able to do a three word search on a website that came up by me typing 3 letters into my URL bar, and the first hit had my exact problem, and that the most arcane of fixes right there ready to be gleaned by anyone who happened by. discussions.apple.com rules.
- Todd Howard's blog
- Login or register to post comments
-
