I have a "Save" problem that appears to be related to the Finder. I say "appears" because the results are slightly different if saving from Microsoft Office or from iWork.

If I save a Microsoft Office document (doesn't matter which one) to the Desktop it does not save with the correct icon. It's always plain with the folded over corner and no colour. If one of these is attached to an email (e,g, Word) it does not get sent as a Word document.

If I save into a folder on the desktop, I get the correct document icon. However, this does not work with iWork documents.

"Pages" documents Save as the plain Jane icon whether saving to the desktop or into the folder.

I cannot think of any possible clues, except perhaps with Microsoft Office. The first time this starting happening, I had been having problems in Word with the Custom Dictionaries. I could not get Word to keep a Custom Dictionary 'checked off' for use.

ryck

I am inclined to think that this might possibly be an issue between the latest OS and an earlier release of Office......Snow Leopard to Office 2004 for the Mac for instance?

I saw something similar with Office X once I got to Leopard on my machine....worked fine for my needs through OS X 10.4.x, but started to misbehave once I got up to OS X 10.5.x --- let us know if this relates to your issue.

Did you ever solve the problem with getting the custom dictionary to "stick" in Word and if so how? To me that sounds more like a symptom than a cause.

The normal fix for icon display problems is using OnyX or a similar utility to rebuild the "Launch Services" database. Your oddly mixed results leads me to suspect possible underlying permission issues as well, but I would start with the LaunchServices Database rebuild.

I haven't experience any problems in 10.6.5 and Office 2004 11.6.2, although both updates are recent. Couple of curious things with Word....

1. This morning I noticed the Save function is not adding the .doc extension and I am having to do it manually. I don't know if that was the case yesterday but it's probably a safe assumption.

Additional info: I almost forgot...it seems to me there was a box in Word Preferences where you chose to have the .doc extension added. I looked through every preference but could not find that checkbox.

2. If I go to "About Word" it says the version is 11.6.1 even though I did the update to 11.6.2.

All of that being said, it still wouldn't explain why Pages is acting similarly.

ryck

No, I didn't solve that one and I was busy so I left it alone after a few tries. There are two Custom Dictionaries and one will stick but the second won't.


I'll give that a try (have never used Onyx) but I wonder if I should first confirm that I still have 11.6.2, by reinstalling it.

ryck

Here's what I've done:

1. Used OnyX to:

a) Verify the drive
b) Fix Disk Permissions
c) Rebuild Launch Services (including dyld Shared Cache)

2. Went to Mactopia and re-installed Office 2004 11.6.2

3. Restarted

Results are:

1. The "Save" function in Word still needs the .doc extension added manually.

2. A Word document, with the .doc extension, saves to the desktop as the wrong icon. However, as it saves, it quickly flashes through the normal blue coloured icon.

Note: One difference from before. When I previously added one of these desktop saves to an email, it shipped and was received as the wrong type of document (i.e. not a usual Word document). This time however, although still the wrong icon, it adds to an email as a usual Word document.

3. The About Word still says 11.6.1

Questions:

1. OnyX had a replace DS files function. Is that worth a try?

2. Is it worth going back in Time machine to get a pre 11.6.1 version of Office?

ryck

Additional Information 12:23:00 PST:

I did a quick test of simply dragging a Word document (with the .doc extension but the wrong icon) from the desktop into a folder. It changed into the correct icon.

I then attached this document from the folder to an email and it remained as the correct icon - both sent and received.

When I dragged it from the folder to the desktop it reverted to the incorrect status.

The version number of the individual components of Microsoft Office do not necessarily track with the version number of Office itself. To my knowledge this practice goes all the way back to Office '95 when I was training Tech Support "engineers" for Microsoft and has not changed since then. (Another Microsoft contribution to FUD).

Repairing Disk Permissions only fixes the permissions for System and Applications that have receipt packages in /Library/Receipts. It has no effect on files or folders in your user folder which includes your Desktop folder your individual Library folder or the folders the plists contained therein, and most likely the folder where your Word documents are stored. So there may still be some strange permissions issues floating around to cause you some grief. If you boot from your OS X install disc, then after selecting your language go to the Utilities menu and you will find an item to "Repair user permissions". Unlike Repair Disk Permissions it only takes several seconds to execute and should clean up any permissions issues within your user folder.

I no longer use any version of Microsoft Office, so I cannot help you with the file extension issue other than to say my experience is Microsoft can find more places to hide a preference like that, than any other software developer I know.

The OnyX (congratulations you are one of the few who gets the capitalization right) DS Store function is not a "replace" it is a "delete". The .DS_Store files control the display of the folders and files in OS X such as the view, the sort order, the position and size of the Finder window, etc. I have never heard of a .DS_Store causing the kinds of problems you are describing, but FWIW before you mentioned it, I had thought of suggesting deleting the .DS_Store files to see if that might "fix" the icon problem.

As for retrieving a previous version of Office, since Pages files are displaying similar "unusual" problems, I am really inclined to believe the issue does not reside with MS Office or Word. However, since you have Time Machine it would not be too difficult to go back a version and if that did not help just as easily restore the version you have.

I'll give you this － you have an interesting and challenging problem here.

I'm not running 10.6, so apologies if this question is inapplicable, but if you click on the Desktop, then type command-J or go to Finder's View menu -> Show View Options command, is the Show icon preview checkbox checked? If so, does unchecking/rechecking it have any effect?

Thank you for a lot of interesting and informative information. It is appreciated and, of course, thanks for spending so much time on my problem.

So far as the spelling of OnyX is concerned, there are two things I have always been very careful about. One is spelling and the other is the pronunciation of people's names.

ryck

Bingo. We appear to be close to lift-off. As soon as I unchecked the box the Word and Pages documents on the desktop changed to the correct icons. A Powerpoint document though, which had the correct icon, flipped over to the wrong one.

When I double-clicked the Powerpoint it opened in Keynote. However, when I closed it and opened the Powerpoint application, the desktop icon reverted to the correct one.

I'll goof around with this a bit more but it looks like we're closing in on home base.

Thanks

ryck

That's what mine says too; apparently Word's version number didn't change with the 11.6.2 update. As the accompanying web page says:
To verify that you have installed [this update] on your Mac(s), select the Microsoft Component Plugin file in the Microsoft Office 2004/Office folder on your hard disk, and then on the File menu, click Get Info.

Did it, and it does show 11.6.2. I guess this is one of those "when all else fails, read the instructions" situations.

ryck

Well, RTFM issues occur in the best of families, mine included.
That said, consider my post another small poke at your original problem.

I've now done some experimenting and that does solve the problem. I just wonder how the box could have got checked off. It certainly wasn't done deliberately....in fact, I don't know if I've ever opened that option.

ryck

Finder view (folder view options) in SL has problems. My preferred option is column view. If this is enabled, there is no way to uncheck "show preview icon" and make it a default setting. The pertinent defaults can only be found in list view or icons view. I would choose those, check the default and then revert to column view. Then it would stick. On a general note, I think that trashing finder preferences would restore normal desktop icon appearance, except that the unchecking of preview icon show and changing defaults should be repeated. My understanding is that it has nothing to do with Office, but with Finder.

Not sure what you're saying here. Since the Desktop itself—not the Desktop folder—is only seen in, well, "Desktop view," there's no switching of views possible (or required) to uncheck Show icon preview.

If you're referring to folder view options, I can't contribute to the discussion because, as I said above, I'm not running 10.6. But if I'm correctly interpreting ryck's posts, the icon preview problem was occurring only on the Desktop itself, not in folders.

You are correct about folder view, I meant that. You also seem to be correct about Ryck's problem (Desktop vs. folders). He experimented with "show icon preview" but I did not quite understand what result did he get. On my machine, folder view and Desktop view of the icons correspond to each other. Seems like Finder preferences on his computer may need to be trashed and recreated.

In this case, the icons were on the desktop. Sometimes I get documents that I'm asked to edit. If they are documents that I'm only going to keep when attached to the return email, I do the editing using a copy saved to the desktop. (It makes it easier to locate the document if I'm doing the edits over a few days)

When I return the edited document to the Sender I attach from the desktop.

However, because the icons had changed I was attaching Word documents that were not "Word" when sent, causing a difficulty for the recipient. When the icons changed back to the coloured version, the problem went away.


Like you, I prefer Column view when I'm looking at my drive. It's much easier and more organized.

At Desktop>View, I don't have all the options available as I have when I'm viewing my drive. I have only "Clean Up", "Arrange By" "Show View Options".

What would have been choices for - Icons, List, Columns, Cover Flow - are greyed out. However, I like the Dock so I wouldn't choose to use Column View at the Desktop anyway.

When I open a folder on the Desktop, that folder opens in Column View, which is also what I want.

ryck

About icon, list, and column view. Just double click on the hard disk icon to reveal the main directory folders. Then under Finder>view all these options become available and you can tweak them.

I think ryck understands how to switch between the various views for folders. His statement about the choices being greyed out is in reference to the Desktop, for which no such choices are available.

I think you're misunderstanding how view options work.

In Snow Leopard, for example, there are five views: Icon, List, Column, Cover Flow, and Desktop. Other OS versions have a different list of views, but the concept is the same. Each view has its own set of options, independent of the others. For example, you can have "show icon preview" enabled for one view but disabled for another view, even on the same folder.

A Finder window can be in any of the first four views. The desktop (by which I mean the part of the screen behind all the windows) always shows ~/Desktop in Desktop view.

A folder may have defined view options for each of these five views. These are the options you see with "Show View Options". Until you do that, the folder simply doesn't have defined view options for that view, and will use the default view options for that view instead. You set the default options for a view by clicking "Use as Defaults" in the view options window for any window currently using that view. Either way, the meaning is: If this folder is being displayed in this view, these are the view options to apply.

Each Finder window has a "root" folder, which is initially the folder that window was opened on (from the Dock, or using Finder's Go to Folder menu command, or inserting a disk), but clicking on a folder in the sidebar or toolbar or double-clicking a folder's icon in icon view makes that folder the root folder for the window, even though you're not opening a new window.

A folder may also have a default view (set by checking "Always open in..." in the View Options window), which is the initial view used for a new Finder window rooted in that folder. A window's view can be changed without affecting the default view (if any) for its root view. Once the window's view is determined, the applicable view options are found as described above: if the window's root folder defines view options for that view, use those; otherwise use the default view options for that view.

Notice that you may be looking at the same folder in different ways at the same time. ~/Desktop is always visible (in Desktop view) on the desktop, but may also be visible inside one or more Finder windows. You could thus be simultaneously seeing the contents of the Desktop folder in all five views (on the desktop and in four different Finder windows), each view having its own independent set of view options.

Failure to understand this could lead one to believe that view options were sometimes "not sticking", when what's really happening is that you're changing view options and then changing views. View options do not carry over from one view to another.

Force-quitting Finder can also make one think view and other window settings are not sticking. If you force-quit Finder, it doesn't get a chance to update the .DS_Store files where all these settings are saved. Force Quit is extremely rude: never force-quit any application if there is a politer way to ask it to quit. To save settings, either log out, or more simply quit Finder using the Terminal command:

osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to quit'

Change "quit" to "activate", or more simply click on Finder's Dock icon to relaunch it.

Or add the Quit menu item to the Finder menu by using the Terminal command

defaults write com.apple.Finder QuitMenuItem 1

and then quitting/relaunching Finder—either by the procedures mentioned above, or simply by clicking and holding Finder's Dock icon with the Option key depressed and choosing Relaunch from the contextual menu.

Edit: Of course, the availability of the Relaunch command from Finder's Dock icon may make the Quit menu item seem redundant, but I suppose there might be some cases in which running without Finder active can be useful.

I am not sure what your point is, but anyway... I guess, the SL (I have experimented with it a little bit) has a better "stickiness" of the view options in folder view. However, Leopard is not like that. My suggestions above are valid for Leopard that had problems with view options and showing icon preview. I think we had a thread a while ago on this issue. In SL the defaults are still not enabled in the folder column view but if one checks the box "always open in column view", it now sticks, together with the unchecked "show icon preview". I am sorry for the confusion between Leopard and SL.
I like the idea to enable defaults from the command line mentioned by DK.

I got the same effect by adding a 'tell application "Finder" to quit' script to my scripts menu.

I thought the 'Relaunch Finder' menu command sent Finder a kill signal instead of a quit message (so that it will still work if Finder is hung and not responding to events), but I tested it just now and apparently it tries the quit message first.

The primary advantage that the Terminal command has over other methods is that it can be included in a longer shell script. For example, I frequently see advice to execute a command like:

defaults write com.apple.Finder yadda yadda; killall Finder

which is plain wrong. Modifications to any application's preference file should be done with the application not running, and that applies to Finder too. The sequence should be:

osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to quit'
defaults write com.apple.Finder yadda yadda
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to activate'

Similar precautions are needed when deleting Finder's preference file. You can't do it while Finder is running, so you can't use Finder to delete (or trash) the file. Instead:

osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to quit'
mv -i ~/Libary/Preferences/com.apple.Finder.plist ~/.Trash
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to activate'

What I described is the way OS X has always behaved, with the only change from one version to another being the list of available views. The "stickiness" (or lack thereof) has always been as I described (and has always been highly non-intuitive).

Not exactly. You described in general the checking "use as defaults" as if this option were available in any view. However, in column view this option is not available, either in Leopard or in SL. Therefore, I do agree with your definition "highly non-intuitive".

I've always considered column "view" to be a different sort of animal.

It's really more of a browsing mode than a simple window view (from my perspective anyway). Note that —while in Column Mode —we are almost always "viewing" multiple folders simultaneously. E.g., while looking at the /Applications/Utilities/ level, we are also seeing its parent /Applications/ as well as the root level / (depending on how wide the window is of course). A similar phenomenon is possible in list view, if we expand the disclosure triangles... but in Column Mode, multi-level "viewness" is the basic nature of that beast (e.g., all visible levels can be scrolled independently).

Note also that —without the Finder toolbar —other views like icon and list will spawn a new window when we enter a different folder... whereas Column Mode maintains the single-window browsing behavior (despite the lack of Finder's toolbar).

I'm not making any Earth-shattering point here or anything.
Just sayin'... this subject does come with some complexity.

You're right, and that's one of the things I like about Column.

I usually decide, once a project is done, to do a bit of "refiling" and/or "tossing out" of no-longer- necessary files. It's easier to see what I'm doing when in Column, than if I used "List" where a bunch of stuff would be past the bottom of the window.

It's a handy mode for those of us who are easily confused.

ryck

>It's a handy mode for those of us who are easily confused.

And speaking of confusion, I have absolutely no idea why people want to live with icon view in which a folder with many files/folders is a nightmare to navigate.

I've been 99.9% stuck in column view (Some windows open in list view for easier perusal of long file/folder names.) since I discovered it.

As the expression goes, "It's a machaya!"

Ditto!

what blows my mind is when I see someone with a high resolution display, with the desktop icons set to smallest possible, so they have 150 icons on the desktop.

(and they usually know precisely where all 150 of them are on the screen)

Further testing shows that I was right the first time. "Relaunch Finder", force quit (whether from Activity Monitor or the force quit window you reach with command-option-escape), "killall Finder", and "kill <Finder's pid>" all do the same thing: they send a SIGTERM signal to Finder, which kills Finder dead in its tracks. Finder is never sent a quit message by any of these commands. It does not get a chance to clean up. Recent changes will usually be lost, and any file Finder happens to be in the middle of updating will likely get corrupted.

I know this is an old thread, and sorry to resurrect it, but I don't want anyone who finds it to be misled by my earlier comment.