Originally Posted By amazedncal2 Hello and here I am again. Frustrated as heck. I "upgraded" to OSX Lion which has blocked my access to Excel/Word for Mac. I have ALL my docs/info in there. I tried to move everything to "Pages" which is now frozen (spinning wheel) about midway through, ending up with me having to forcequit everything. My son who helps me with these headaches won't be able to help me until next week. Any ideas? Should I just go to the store and buy the new version of Excel/Word and hope I don't destroy the whole computer trying to install it? Thank you for any thoughts you may have. I use a PC at work and I don't love it either so that idea is moot
Originally Posted By Autopia Deb Can you roll back to your previous OS? If you can, maybe you can convert your Word and Excel to Pages and Notes(?) and then try the upgrade again maybe when your son is available.
Originally Posted By Longhorn12 But...but...but MACS JUST WERK NO BUGS EVAAAR But to be honest here... even the industry has admitted that Lion is a flaming pile of S* Currently Excel is incompatible with Lion so it doesn't matter if you buy a new version.
Originally Posted By amazedncal2 ACK!!! No excel? ACK!!! again. I don't use it much myself but my 3 kids who use PC's do. I have their wedding/shower/holiday spread sheets saved in my docs. Sigh. Thank you Autopia Deb and Longhorn12. I'm going to see if there is a way for me to dump Lion when my son has time (I already hate what it's done to my Mail.) Note to self.....research before "upgrade" Oh, yeah it doesn't seem to like my printer now either...... I think I'm going to be spending more time at the office
Originally Posted By DDMAN26 The only computer my family has ever had are Macs and never ran into any issues.
Originally Posted By Princessjenn5795 If you have an Apple Store near you, you should take it in there and see if they can help you. I upgraded to Lion and had no problems at all with the Office for Mac programs. The Apple Store employees are usually really helpful. My mother-in-law has to go in there every couple of months (because she is the type of person who should never own any electronic devices ever) and they always help her fix whatever she has done.
Originally Posted By Princessjenn5795 Oh, and Longhorn, I haven't had any problems with my Excel since I upgraded to Lion. The only problem I have had is that very now and then my computer gets a little slow.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip I LOVE my i-Mac but am still running OS X 10.4.11. I don't do upgrades. When I figure I need an upgrade I buy a new computer... it is easier that way! So far, I see no reason to upgrade what I have. I'll take Mac over PC any day... my wife has two PC's... both bought within the last year. She has far more problems than I have with my 5-year-old Mac.
Originally Posted By Autopia Deb I have both platforms and neither give me much trouble. But I can work a little better in "the guts" of the PC than the Mac.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>Any ideas? Should I just go to the store and buy the new version of Excel/Word and hope I don't destroy the whole computer trying to install it?<< Sounds like there's more going on here, especially if Pages is also having issues. When you say "blocked," what do you mean? Which version is it? Are you able to open it at all to download a software update? In the meantime.... Here's what you're going to do: Shut down the computer. Restart the computer Immediately after hearing the Mac chime (WALL-E chime as well), hold the shift key until the grey Apple logo disappears. This will boot in safe mode Try running things in safe mode - see if you can access things, get your docs working, etc. If not, shut down all your programs and go into disc utility. With the Finder up, hit command+shift+u. Open "Disk Utility." Select your hard drive on the left. Run "Verify Disk" to confirm there's no errors. Do this on the main disk and the partition below (it'll be slightly indented and below the main disk) If your disk needs to be repaired, hit Repair Disk (verify disk will tell you this). You MAY need to boot in recovery mode to do the repair disk. Restart your machine, and immediately after the Mac chime, hold command+r This will bring up the recovery screen. Choose disk utility and repair from there if you need to. Feel free to post more questions here, and www.apple.com is your best friend. Great support forums with Mac nerds so helpful you won't believe your eyes.
Originally Posted By amazedncal2 You all are awesome Thanks! I have hope Our Apple Store is 1/2 hour plus away and the stores are crazy busy but I think it's worth it for me to steel myself and go next week on a work day. When I try to get into Word or Excel a box pops up that says Power PC applications are no longer supported. I decided to print out this thread and follow ecdc's instructions and yep....my printer is now out of black ink. I feel like I looked into Mara's eye or something! OK, just spent 20 minutes trying to use other ink cartridges...shaking the cartridge, trying to get the freaking cartridge back into the printer....I'll be back.....
Originally Posted By Longhorn12 >Oh, and Longhorn, I haven't had any problems with my Excel since I upgraded to Lion. The only problem I have had is that very now and then my computer gets a little slow.< I may have been going on outdated information (As I'm a Win/Linux guy) But the problem she described with Power PC applications no longer being supported is a known issue with Lion.
Originally Posted By ecdc Oh okay, so we are dealing with two separate issues here. The power PC apps - nothing you can do. If Office is your thing, go get the Office for Mac '11 version. But running slow and Pages not loading to the point where you can't open your docs, that's a different issue that could be solved by what I'm advising with your disk check. I installed Lion on an older MacBook and it does okay but isn't as snappy as I'd like sometimes. Lion just requires a fairly robust machine.
Originally Posted By amazedncal2 ecdc I followed your directions, thank you for making them so user friendly verify disk ran for about 1 minute and it only ran something about volume then it stopped and said it was OK. I think I'll go ahead and get office 11. Right now I can't open docs, pdf's whatever in any form. I couldn't even write a recipe down. Weird how times have changed. I needed to go and get a pencil and paper! Then again, if I can get pages working, well we'll see. Oh, yeah, yesterday my pencil sharpener died too It was a magical day! Thank you all so much. You've let me know that it's not just me! My first choice is to see if I can get rid of Lion and go "old school" Second choice is to get Office 11 and learn to work with "numbers"....Numbers seems to be working, my sister sent me a spreadsheet made on Excel and it opened in numbers My son may be coming by today so we'll see what he can do. He knows about the pages freeze but didn't have time to look into it. OR I'll make an appointment at the Apple store on Tuesday. You all have kept me hopeful that I'll get my beloved docs back
Originally Posted By amazedncal2 I have my docs back! Well sort of. My son did whatever he needed to do to uninstall pages and reinstall. So now pages is unfrozen. Now I need to go to "finder" "documents" and drag each one separately over to pages. It will be cleaner this way anyway and I'm finding lots of "what the heck" docs that should have been deleted long ago. I was able to tell him that I won't be able to get Excel thanks LP friends for that and he was shocked as everyone has been. So he's convinced me to use Pages and Numbers for now. He's tutored me on how to send docs to PC users. We'll see. Thank you all again for keeping me sane through this and sharing your thoughts, experiences and insights Now about that pencil sharpener.....
Originally Posted By ecdc Excellent news! Say the word if you need more help. I just had to replace my hard drive in my MacBook. The upgrade wad nice - wish'd I'd done it years ago.
Originally Posted By debtee I hope you get your Docs back amazed! I bought a new macbook last week and I am having all kinds of trouble. I think it's because the new macbook comes with Lion and I have transferred my data from iPhoto, iTunes and my address book from my old macbook onto it, which was all Snow Leopard. I have spoken to Apple and they said it could be done and that I have done it the correct way but them saying it and actually have it all working are two different things! It's so slow and hanging all the time and now my email is not working at all since I installed my old address book?? I think I now have no option but to reset and start again. At the moment I have gone back to my old macbook as I'm so frustrated with the new one!
Originally Posted By amazedncal2 I feel your pain debtee! SO frustrating to upgrade and then find out it's way more work than you planned for.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>It's so slow and hanging all the time and now my email is not working at all since I installed my old address book??<< Book a Genius Bar appointment at your local Apple store and have them take a look. No way a new MacBook with Lion installed should be hanging or freezing, mail works great on mine, etc. FYI, I work in tech support for a cell company, so don't be insulted by these questions, but I've learned to never assume someone's knowledge level Are you actually shutting down programs or just closing a window? On a Mac, if you hit the red x in the top left of the window, it doesn't shut down the program, it just closes that window (even if it's the only window you have open) and your program will remain open and running. Make sure you do command+q to quit programs, or go to the menu and hit Quit [program name]. A quick way to check what you have open is command+tab. It will bring up a bar in the middle of your screen with your programs, and tab will cycle through them. Have you installed a lot of programs that run in the background? Go to System Preferences> Users and Groups. On the left will be a list of your users. Select the current one where everything is hanging. Then select the Login Items button towards the top. This is a list of everything that will automatically start running when you boot up your computer. I have four listed - if you have a dozen or something, that might be an issue. You can remove them entirely or uncheck them so they won't boot. Examples of this kind of thing are remote sharing (so you can access your computer from another location) scanners (virus checkers, malware, etc). But really...most programs shouldn't need anything running at start up. If you're unsure of something you're seeing, Google the name and it will bring up forums and pages with people talking about it and telling you what it is. There's just a couple of suggestions. The Apple forums are even better <a href="http://discussions.apple.com" target="_blank">http://discussions.apple.com</a>
