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Same here. I erased my HD last night, did a clean install of Mac OS 10.11, installed the 10.11.1 update this morning, reinstalled Word 2016 (and the latest update), copied some text into a new document, saved it and then scrolled. Crashed immediately!
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Unfortunately I believe your only workaround at the moment is to restore your system to a time before you updated it to El Capitan. There are problems with lockups effecting both Office 2011 and Office 2016 for the Mac when El Capitan is introduced into the mix. Fixes are coming but most likely they won't be available for a few weeks... and then there's still no guarantee that the patches will correct everything being reported.
Changing the OS is the single biggest change you can make to a computer because it effects everything including all loaded software applications and all attached hardware. You should never change your Operating System without doing some very thorough analysis of what it will effect including all major software applications you use, your printers, auxiliary monitors and disk drives.
Writes plug-in apps for
Office for Mac and PC
http://greatcirclelearning.com
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Changing the OS is the single biggest change you can make to a computer because it effects everything including all loaded software applications and all attached hardware.
This is a good argument had the change to the OS been unexpected. It was not.
You should never change your Operating System without doing some very thorough analysis of what it will effect including all major software applications you use, your printers, auxiliary monitors and disk drives.
How is a user expected to actually do this? Users -should- upgrade for security fixes all the time, the benefits of staying current vastly outweigh the downsides. It is impossible to expect end users to audit their own software by installing in a separate partition and testing extensively all use-cases. We expect Apple and big name software companies to audit the changes.
Precisely because OS updates are so invasive, Apple offered a closed beta to developers in June, and a public beta a couple of months after that. I was experiencing these freezes with Office with the GM release candidate for at least a month with just the RC, so there was a lot of warning. I filed bug reports and error reports each time I had to force quit, and expected such an obvious and frequent failure to be fixed by the time of release.
This means that either Microsoft does not beta test OS X releases with Office 365 or the problem is so difficult to solve that they could not find a solution in 4-5 months of testing. I should hope a company the size of Microsoft can fairly easily get in touch with the right people at Apple, and with 4 months, no matter how big a delta there must be alternative fixes.
Finally - the complaining will not be helped by Microsoft's complete silence except for an offering on another thread to 'please continue installing updates we'll fix it eventually'. If they came open and explained what the issues they are facing are people would be a lot more understanding.
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Hi Adam,
Thanks for your comments. Let me ask... What's your line of work? Are you in software development? Do you work or consult to Apple or Microsoft? The reason I ask is that it will help me understand better the perspective you are coming from.
The one area that I really disagree with you on is the fourth paragraph where you are commenting on my assertion that people should know that an Operating System change can really impact on their system and they should do an analysis of what it might effect before they make the move. I probably could have worded my statement better but I am absolutely not talking about security updates, which occur within a given "System Version" to add bug fixes, patches for security vulnerabilities, etc. What I am talking about is major releases such as a move from Yosemite to El Capitan that add new features, capabilities and specifically in Apple's case, add interfaces to new hardware that is coming over the next 12 months. When the software interface protocols to the hardware change, be it to a local device such as a screen, disk drive, printer, and even to cloud storage facilities, that's when usually the shirt hits the fan. Every 3rd party vendor has to change, test, verify and deploy new solutions that fit the new OS protocols.
And it's really important to consider in the case of Apple that Microsoft is just another 3rd party vendor. Apple wants to launch in October their new OS because it will allow them to build and ship new hardware for the holiday season... well what are the schedules and priorities of the other company's, who are also public BTW and have Directors and Owners to answer to as well. I'm sure, in fact I'm really sure, in the case Apple and Microsoft that they are trying the hardest to get an integrated flow of deployment going. How do I know? Well for one I can't tell you but for two just look at when Office 2016 for the Mac actually launched publicly. Personally, I think it was too soon but they needed more input from people probably like yourself who were willing to bang on the product while using a beta copy of El Capitan on various hardware platforms.
You can huff and puff and yell would'a, should'a, could'a all you want but unless you have ever worked in a software development, testing and validation environment... you honestly don't know what you don't know. All I can say is, "Honest to God, it's much more complicated than most people can ever fully understand or appreciate."
FWIW - The one area of your rebuttal to my reply posting that I agree with you on is your last paragraph.
Writes plug-in apps for
Office for Mac and PC
http://greatcirclelearning.com
Abuse history
- Changing the OS is the single biggest change you can make to a computer because it effects everything including all loaded software applications and all attached hardware.
This is a good argument had the change to the OS been unexpected. It was not.
Of course changes to Mac OS X were expected. The Gold Master is the only version that really matters because that means changes are mostly locked-in and developers can actually work on making updates with some confidence their fixes will work in the version that is released to market. The El Capitan Gold Master was available only 3 weeks before Apple released El Capitan. Rewriting in just 3 weeks software that took years to write in the first place just isn't going to happen no matter how badly Microsoft wants their software to run in El Capitan.
- You should never change your Operating System without doing some very thorough analysis of what it will effect including all major software applications you use, your printers, auxiliary monitors and disk drives.
How is a user expected to actually do this? Users -should- upgrade for security fixes all the time, the benefits of staying current vastly outweigh the downsides. It is impossible to expect end users to audit their own software by installing in a separate partition and testing extensively all use-cases. We expect Apple and big name software companies to audit the changes.
For personal users a quick trip to the web site of any application will reveal whether or not that software will run in El Capitan. In the case of Microsoft Office, El Capitan is not listed as a supported operating system. That should be enough to tell users not to install El Capitan and expect Office applications to run.
For organizations, your IT folks should be testing applications and operating systems all along, just like the software developers do. Test the apps you use against the OS you are planning to deploy. If critical apps don't run or run as required, obviously you wait until they do.
If you're the type who wants to help by filing good bug reports and living with unsolvable problems, then by all means update. Fill in those forms Apple and Microsoft provide to give them good feedback so they can work on fixing problems.
If you're the type who loves to kvetch and complain, install your apps in unsupported operating systems and you will get no sympathy from me whatsoever.
Precisely because OS updates are so invasive, Apple offered a closed beta to developers in June, and a public beta a couple of months after that. I was experiencing these freezes with Office with the GM release candidate for at least a month with just the RC, so there was a lot of warning. I filed bug reports and error reports each time I had to force quit, and expected such an obvious and frequent failure to be fixed by the time of release.
This is good. I hope this means you are in the adventuresome category who likes to be on the bleeding edge and not a whiner/complainer. You can be sure Apple passed your reports on to Microsoft and that both companies know about and are working on fixes.
This means that either Microsoft does not beta test OS X releases with Office 365 or the problem is so difficult to solve that they could not find a solution in 4-5 months of testing. I should hope a company the size of Microsoft can fairly easily get in touch with the right people at Apple, and with 4 months, no matter how big a delta there must be alternative fixes.
Concluding that Apple did not test Microsoft Office applications in beta builds of El Capitan is just silly. Concluding that Microsoft did not test their Office applications in beta builds of El Capitan is also silly. We're talking about robust desktop software, not simple little phone or tablet apps here. Less than 3 weeks is simply not enough time to rebuild robust Office applications. If you participated in both the Office 2016 preview and the Mac OS El Capitan developer preview and were paying close attention you would have noticed Microsoft made changes in Microsoft Office to accommodate El Capitan.
- Finally - the complaining will not be helped by Microsoft's complete silence except for an offering on another thread to 'please continue installing updates we'll fix it eventually'. If they came open and explained what the issues they are facing are people would be a lot more understanding.
Microsoft has not been silent about El Capitan updates. The latest update to Office 2016 included some El Capitan fixes including getting the Visual Basic Editor, already a sorry mess, up and running again (it was completely wrecked by El Capitan). An Outlook freeze was addressed. At the same time, Microsoft has said not all known issues have been fixed. There is a Q&A thread that Microsoft is using to keep everyone informed. It's this one:
Microsoft has also opened a new site for feature requests and is taking El Capitan feedback there, as well.
Word: word.uservoice.com
Excel: excel.uservoice.com
PowerPoint: powerpoint.uservoice.com
Outlook: outlook.uservoice.com
OneNote: onenote.uservoice.com
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There is no need to defend Microsoft here. This is poor Engineering and QA from the Microsoft Office team. Office 2016 for Mac is not ready for enterprise deployment. Microsoft would have been smarter to delay the release of Office 2016 by a month to get all of the Level 1 bugs out.
I'd note that Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac had similar crashing issues (Primarily Outlook) back in 2012 that were eventually fixed. Users were as frustrated then as they are now.
If you are an end user, you might consider using Time Machine to restore to a previous version of your disk image (with Yosemite and Office 2011).


