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Scrolling problem using Word 2004 on 2nd monitor

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PThomp...@gmail.com

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Jan 23, 2006, 5:59:11 PM1/23/06
to
Hi Folks,

I am running Tiger (10.4.4) on a 17" powerbook. I have the latest
updates for the OS and for MS Office 2004.

My problem: after the latest microsoft update I am no longer able to
scroll through docs when the doc is presented on a 2nd monitor (with
mirroring turned off).

Any clues as to how to fix this problem?

Cheers,
Peter Thompson

Clive Huggan

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Jan 24, 2006, 1:00:03 AM1/24/06
to
Did you connect the 2nd monitor while the PowerBook was switched off, Peter?

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is 5-11 hours different from the US and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
============================================================

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============================================================

On 24/1/06 9:59 AM, in article
1138057151....@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com,

Elliott Roper

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Jan 24, 2006, 5:25:03 AM1/24/06
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In article <BFFC0D93.17B77%REMOVETH...@ANDTHISstrategists.com.au>,
Clive Huggan <REMOVETH...@ANDTHISstrategists.com.au> wrote:

> Did you connect the 2nd monitor while the PowerBook was switched off, Peter?

Another data point:
Since I'd just applied the 11.2 » 11.2.1 upgrade and I'm also on OS X
10.4.4, I immediately tried to repeat Peter's problem, but it scrolls
fine for me, both with keyboard and by dragging the scroller lozenge.

Also, I have a 12" PB which has no restraint on the external monitor
socket (miniDVI) I can tell you that hot plugging the second monitor
does not have too many bad effects here. The cable falls out a couple
of times a day, and I simply slam it back in and wait for the displays
to stop arguing with one another (about 5-10 secs).

I sometimes see the other reported problem where the second display's
window gets many lines of text horizontally 'fractured', but so far,
have not seen that with the 10.4.4 /11.2.1 combination.

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Corentin Cras-Méneur

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Jan 24, 2006, 2:59:02 PM1/24/06
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Elliott Roper <nos...@yrl.co.uk> wrote:

> Another data point:
> Since I'd just applied the 11.2 » 11.2.1 upgrade and I'm also on OS X
> 10.4.4, I immediately tried to repeat Peter's problem, but it scrolls
> fine for me, both with keyboard and by dragging the scroller lozenge.

I can't repro the problem either. It all scrolls fine here on my dual
monitor setup,

Corentin


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PThomp...@gmail.com

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Jan 25, 2006, 1:06:07 PM1/25/06
to
Hi Folks,

I have not tried booting up with the 2nd monitor, it is always a hot
insertion.

One of my colleagues had mentioned that there might be a bad
interaction between Word and X11, though. I also run the Gimp, which
requires X11. I have the X11 from the Tiger disk installed.

I've been tempted to re-install office to see if that fixes the
problem. I'll do that later today and let you know how that works out.

Cheers,
Peter Thompson
San Diego, CA

Elliott Roper

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Jan 25, 2006, 1:54:23 PM1/25/06
to
In article <1138212367.4...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
<"PThomp...@gmail.com"> wrote:

Re-installing Office will probably be a lot of effort for little
result. Follow the MVP advice on properly de-installing it first if you
really must.

Before that, can you reproduce the problem when X11 is not running?

PThomp...@gmail.com

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Jan 25, 2006, 6:04:11 PM1/25/06
to
Hi Folks,

I rarely run X11, and can consistenly reproduce the error. I open the
doc, it scrolls fine on the main powerbook screen, move the doc to the
other monitor (dragging), and the doc will no longer scroll. I bring
the doc back to the main screen and the scrolling takes place. Very
strange.

I'll look for the info on de-installing office and if necessary, will
follow.

Cheers,
Peter

Daiya Mitchell

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Jan 25, 2006, 6:50:10 PM1/25/06
to
I know nothing about 2nd monitors (so not promising these will help), but I
do have these links preset for easy entry :) , so:

You might as well try the standard Word troubleshooting tips first:
http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/TroubleshootingIndex.htm
(hit refresh a few times in Safari, or use a different browser)

Here's the best practice on Remove and Reinstall:
http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/RemoveReinstall.htm
(hit reload a few times in Safari, or use a different browser)

--
Daiya Mitchell, MVP Mac/Word
Word FAQ: http://www.word.mvps.org/
MacWord Tips: <http://www.word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/>
What's an MVP? A volunteer! Read the FAQ: http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/

Clive Huggan

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Jan 26, 2006, 6:41:36 AM1/26/06
to
Peter,

You really don't need to re-install Word ­ I can't conceive that it will do
you any good, but if you are a recent switcher from Windows it will
undoubtedly be comforting! (Make sure you use the Remove Office software on
your installation CD, and then empty the Trash, before you install again.)
;-)

The reality is: you will get this problem if you insist on hot-plugging your
2nd display. I have several PowerBooks used in all combinations with
several displays and I connect/disconnect only when shut down. It takes ­
what? ­ 2 minutes? And it allows Word to refresh its pref files at the same
time, which has benefits if you are an intensive user of Word. Result: I
have never had this problem. Everyone who has had this problem has
hot-plugged their display.

Here's a bonus: Word is quite clever if the 2nd display is connected before
booting. I have a duplicate set of toolbars on the 2nd display and, no
matter what combination of PowerBook and display, Word arranges the
duplicate toolbars to perfectly fit across the top and bottom. Post back if
you would like more on this.

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is 5-11 hours different from the US and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
============================================================
* A SUGGESTION -- WAIT FOR CONSIDERED ADVICE: If you post a question, keep
re-visiting the newsgroup for several days after the first response comes
in. Sometimes it takes a few responses before the best or complete solution
is proposed; sometimes you'll be asked for further information so that a
better answer can be provided. Good tips about getting the best out of
posting are at http://word.mvps.org/FindHelp/Posting.htm (if you use Safari
you may see a blank page and have to hit the circular arrow icon -- "Reload
the current page" -- a few times).

============================================================

On 26/1/06 10:50 AM, in article BFFD4EB2.5D6AA%daiya...@mvps.org.INVALID,

Kohn

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Jan 29, 2006, 8:55:45 PM1/29/06
to
I also have a problem with scrolling. When I have my external monitor
connected to my laptop, scrolling in "Page Layout" view leads to the
text becoming garbled. Scrolling under "Norma" view is fine. I am
able to scroll without any problems in "Page Layout" view when I am
working off of my laptop's display.

Not sure if these problems are related.

John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]

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Jan 30, 2006, 8:17:18 AM1/30/06
to
That's a display driver problem. See if there is an updated driver for your
video card.

It may also mean that your video card does not have enough memory for the
resolution/screen-size/colour depth you are using.

If all else fails, try changing the colour depth of your display: that will
often hide the problem.

Cheers


On 30/1/06 12:55 PM, in article
1138586145.9...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com, "Kohn"
<nwk...@hotmail.com> wrote:

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <jo...@mcghie.name>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

Kohn

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Feb 1, 2006, 6:52:54 PM2/1/06
to
change color depth = change # of colors? I changed it to thousands
from millions and that didn't get rid of the problem

It can't be a driver problem because I'm running the latest version of
MacOS and Apple has never released any firmware updates for the the
Apple display.
I strongly doubt it's a matter of how much video memory. My Powerbook
has 64MB and had no problem scrolling through large Word documents in
the previous version of MS Word.

Not trying to rip your suggestions; I just think the ones you offered
aren't correct. I'd welcome any other ideas about how to remedy the
problem.

Nick

Chris Langford

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Feb 1, 2006, 8:02:50 PM2/1/06
to
I'm seeing the same problem on a user's 12" powerbook/ Apple 20" cinema
display. Here are some things we've noticed:

It only happens in Word.

It happens in both Word X and Word 2004.

It happened under 10.3.9 (I think).

It has happened on the powerbook display, but only running Word X.

Changing the screen resolution from 1680x1050 to 1600x1000 seems to have
fixed it for the time being. Looks like crap, however.

My question to the group: Does this only occur on Apple displays?

Her laptop has the nVidia GeForce FX Go 5200 in it. The ROM Revision is
2069.1. How do I tell if this is the latest?

Chris


On 2/1/06 3:52 PM, in article
1138837974....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com, "Kohn"

John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]

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Feb 2, 2006, 6:14:13 AM2/2/06
to
Hi Chris:

No, it doesn't occur only on Apple displays. This is an ancient "issue"
that first surfaced on the PC in about 1989.... :-)

Word attempts "lazy" redraws and "partial" redraws of the screen to save
processing power and thus improve responsiveness. On some graphics cards,
particularly if the graphics subsystem is struggling for memory, the problem
is "worse".

Usually, you can 'cure' each individual case by paging BACK two or three
screenfuls, then paging forward again. This forces Word to flush the screen
buffer and do a full re-draw.

Something happened in the latest updates to Word and Apple OS X that have
led to a little rash of this issue being reported. I do not know what it
was: but we haven't heard of this issue for quite a while, and all of a
sudden we get several of them.

I have not heard of any recommendations to "cure" it. My experience is that
all computers do it "sometimes", but that computers with hot graphics cards,
lots of graphics memory, and updated graphics drivers seem to suffer from
the issue "less often".

Cheers

On 2/2/06 12:02 PM, in article C0069A3A.9AA%lang...@ohsu.edu, "Chris
Langford" <lang...@ohsu.edu> wrote:

--

PThomp...@gmail.com

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Feb 5, 2006, 9:43:56 AM2/5/06
to
Since there does not appear to be a good work around (and booting with
the monitor attached is not an option, as this is a display in a group
meeting), is Microsoft aware of this bug? Since I'm a chair for a
working group and need to display documents on a regular basis, this is
a big drawback.

The only work around that I have right now, is to drag the document
back to my main screen and then all the scrolling suddenly takes place.
The scrolling does not happen when the doc is on the 2nd display.

Thanks for the help!
Peter

Elliott Roper

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Feb 5, 2006, 11:02:49 AM2/5/06
to
In article <1139150636....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>,
<"PThomp...@gmail.com"> wrote:

It is still a puzzle to me, I never have never seen the problem you
describe.

However, as a workaraound for your meetings, why not try running the PB
displays in mirror mode.
fn-F7 toggles mirroring. (ensure both displays are set to the same
number of pixels for best results)

Clive Huggan

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Feb 5, 2006, 3:57:02 PM2/5/06
to
On 6/2/06 3:02 AM, in article 050220061602490836%nos...@yrl.co.uk, "Elliott
Roper" <nos...@yrl.co.uk> wrote:

> In article <1139150636....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>,
> <"PThomp...@gmail.com"> wrote:
>
>> Since there does not appear to be a good work around (and booting with
>> the monitor attached is not an option, as this is a display in a group
>> meeting), is Microsoft aware of this bug? Since I'm a chair for a
>> working group and need to display documents on a regular basis, this is
>> a big drawback.
>>
>> The only work around that I have right now, is to drag the document
>> back to my main screen and then all the scrolling suddenly takes place.
>> The scrolling does not happen when the doc is on the 2nd display.
>>
> It is still a puzzle to me, I never have never seen the problem you
> describe.
>
> However, as a workaraound for your meetings, why not try running the PB
> displays in mirror mode.
> fn-F7 toggles mirroring. (ensure both displays are set to the same
> number of pixels for best results)

Peter and Kohn,

Just so we can define this problem a bit better for future advising, and
when MacBU look at it, would you kindly clarify some points that I'm not
clear on after looking at the observations in this thread by the two of you?
(I realize your problems may be different):

1. Does this occur equally in Page Layout and Normal views (Peter only)?

2. Can you move the page up/down using the Page Up / Page Down keys? If
so, does the problem with scrolling persist immediately afterwards?

3. Does the problem occur using the thumb (lozenge) or the scroll arrows,
or both?

Elliott, although I [now] realize this thread describes a situation
different from previously reported faults and that booting with both
monitors plugged in apparently won't fix it, my observation is the same as
yours, namely that if the cable falls out, all I have to do is put it back
in and wait a few seconds for the displays to stop arguing with one another.
My assumption had been that since Word had detected the characteristics of
the 2nd display on startup, it retained that knowledge when the 2nd display
was re-connected. Any comment?

I would have to say I'd be hugely inconvenienced if I had to put up with
this, since I work all the time with Word documents across both my 17"
PowerBook and Apple 20" (sometimes 17") LCD displays. Makes me very
cautious about installing OS 10.4.4.

Cheers,
Clive Huggan
============

Elliott Roper

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Feb 5, 2006, 5:29:50 PM2/5/06
to
In article <C00CB1CE.17FA9%REMOVETH...@ANDTHISstrategists.com.au>,
Clive Huggan <REMOVETH...@ANDTHISstrategists.com.au> wrote:

AHA! You have nailed it!
If I start Word with one screen, add the second screen, and drag the
document there, the scrolling and redraw is borked in a very
interesting way. (see below)
If I start Word with both screens running, it scrolls properly on both
screens, but I can wreck it again by dragging the window from the
secondary to the primary screen, pulling the DVI plug, reconnecting it
and dragging the window back to the secondary screen.

The borked scrolling occurs in page view mode. I started with a test
document that had a few lines of text at the top of its only page. On
the second screen, if I scroll with the bar or the keyboard till there
is nothing but white at the bottom of the page and then scroll back up,
there is nothing there, Just white. The blue background gets horizontal
black striations.
If I make insertion point moving keyboard commands, the insertion point
moves. If I type a single character, the whole active line reappears.
If I swap into normal view and back to page view, all the text
reappears, however, if I do further scrolling in page view (more
precisely Page Width) mode, the scrolling and redisplay breaks up
again. I'm pretty sure Word is utterly confused by this time. It tries
to show me the bottom of a page before the beginning of the document,
and sometimes shows a mirage of later text above the beginning of the
text. Often there will be lines of malformed text, with just the bottom
or top half of each character. Resizing the window in page width mode
refreshes the display, but it stays fragile. I have to quit Word, start
it again with both screens running, and then the same document stays
sane on either screen, no matter how It's scrolled.


>
> I would have to say I'd be hugely inconvenienced if I had to put up with
> this, since I work all the time with Word documents across both my 17"
> PowerBook and Apple 20" (sometimes 17") LCD displays. Makes me very
> cautious about installing OS 10.4.4.

That's why I rarely saw it before. I'm almost always in 2 screen mode
when I start Word and leave it running for days on end.

I'm now thinking that the Peter/Kohn problem is a special case of this
borked redraw.

It would be interesting to learn whether they work in page view and/or
page width mode, and whether they see the blue background striated
after scrolling /redraw fails.

It would also be useful to learn if Peter's problem goes away if he
plugs the projector into his Mac before starting Word (forget about
rebooting the whole machine).

It seems like we now have a proven recipe for bringing on the
misbehavior at will.

John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]

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Feb 6, 2006, 11:26:09 PM2/6/06
to
Hi Peter:

Yes, Microsoft is very aware of the bug.

My understanding of the situation is this: The bug is that Mac OS X is
supposed to "tell" applications when the display system "changes". There
are two notifications it is supposed to maintain.

It is maintaining only one. Many current pieces of software, including
Word, are listening for the "other" notification. It never arrives.

If you start Word with both displays plugged in, Word pre-emptively "asks"
the system how many monitors there are and what their settings are. When it
does that, the OS updates both notifications.

So: Yes, Microsoft knows about the bug, but it's in Apple's code, not
theirs, so there's nothing Microsoft can do about it. Apple also knows
about the bug, but they have apparently decided not to fix it, or at least,
not "soon".

Chances are, the next version of Microsoft Office on the Mac will be changed
to use the "other" notification.

Twenty-odd years ago, Microsoft learned some very painful lessons about the
need to "NOT" change how an operating system behaves while users are trying
to use software depending on it. Lessons that go back to the beginning of
computing, on the mainframe. Try telling your bank sometime that their
General Ledger System suddenly doesn't work right because you "made a little
patch to the IBM operating system" They may send a bunch of lawyers with no
sense of humour to have a little "chat" with you... :-) I guess Apple is
still in the process of learning just how much pain will result from this
:-)

Cheers

On 6/2/06 1:43 AM, in article
1139150636....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com,
"PThomp...@gmail.com" <PThomp...@gmail.com> wrote:

--

Kohn

unread,
Feb 7, 2006, 8:02:11 PM2/7/06
to
-only occurs in Page Layout views while using External monitor

-Page Up button produces no problems
-Page Down button produces very little problems (maybe 2 lines of text
out of 12 are disturbed)
-Scrolling Up with the mouse produces no problems
-Scrolling Down with the mouse produces major problems (one line of
text is repeated through the entire document, blocking the view of the
other lines of text)
-Scrolling Up wth the scroll arrows/bar produces no problems
-Scrolling Down with the scroll arrows/bar produces major problems (one
line of text is repeated through the entire document, blocking the view
of the other lines of text)

Hope this helps,
Nick

Clive Huggan

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Feb 7, 2006, 9:11:55 PM2/7/06
to
Thanks, Nick!

Hopefully Elliott's and John's ideas have allowed you to put limits on the
problem now.

Clive Huggan
============

On 8/2/06 12:02 PM, in article
1139360531....@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com, "Kohn"

John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]

unread,
Feb 8, 2006, 2:02:47 AM2/8/06
to
Ah hah! This is the "Idle Loop Interruption" bug :-)

When you hold down a mouse button (as you have to to scroll a document) the
mouse sends a constant streams of "Button Pressed" commands to the operating
system.

Mac OS attempts to process these high-priority commands one by one as they
are received (at the rate of up to 300 a second...).

This "does" interfere with the operation of both Word and the OS. Releasing
the mouse button then clicking again "might" fix the condition (by doing so,
you generate another high-priority interrupt, after which all pending tasks
should run in sequence).

Might not work, mind you...

Sorry to be so unhelpful...

On 8/2/06 12:02 PM, in article
1139360531....@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com, "Kohn"
<nwk...@hotmail.com> wrote:

--

Kohn

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Feb 8, 2006, 4:05:10 PM2/8/06
to
"Releasing the mouse button..."
unfortunately clicking does not remedy the problem. If I stop
scrolling with the mouse, the top line of text remains repeated through
the entire document. The only way for Word to display the actual text
(and not just that one line of repeated text) is to either:
-Scroll up with the mouse upwards
-Use the PageUp or PageDown buttons
-Switch to Normal view

Also, I forgot to mention in my earlier post that using the arrow keys
(on the keyboard) to scroll down causes the same problem. However,
using the arrow keys to scroll up does not cause the problem.

So, in summary: using the mouse scroll or the keyboard down key to
scroll downwards while in Page Layout view causes the problem.

"Sorry to be so unhelpful"
No need to say that. You have been extremely helpful and patient in
helping remedy this problem. I very much appreciate it.

Nick

Clive Huggan

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Feb 8, 2006, 6:57:26 PM2/8/06
to
So, Nick, maybe the moral is?:

1. Work more often in Normal view, which has a quicker response in many
respects anyway (when I need to see pagination etc I key Command-Option-p to
go into Page Layout view, then I immediately return via Command-Option-n).

2. When the beastie occurs, [Page Up key] twice, [Page Down key] twice.

Cheers,

Clive
======

On 9/2/06 8:05 AM, in article
1139432710....@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com, "Kohn"

PThomp...@gmail.com

unread,
Feb 9, 2006, 4:56:53 AM2/9/06
to
Sorry for the long delay - I'm at a meeting in France, and the jetlag
is only now receding.

It looks like there are some workarounds that I will have to try, and
will report back once I have access to a display. For what it is
worth, I have the problem regardless of whether I start Word after
plugging in the external monitor or not. I also use Print mode all the
time (Normal mode won't work as we are trying to show the docs to a
large group and they want to see how it will look on paper). Doing
single clicks of the mouse will just repeat the line of text.

I will try the pageup, pageup, pagedown, pagedown trick. I'll also try
switching between Normal and Presentation views.

I thank everyone for their time, and hope that this will be resolved in
the next OS update.

Cheers,
Peter

Elliott Roper

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Feb 9, 2006, 8:30:46 AM2/9/06
to
In article <1139479013.7...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
<"PThomp...@gmail.com"> wrote:

<snip>

> I thank everyone for their time, and hope that this will be resolved in
> the next OS update.

Don't hold your breath. This *Word only* problem has survived in
various guises from the very first v.X which coincided with OS X
10.2.mumble and lives in in Word 2004
.
.
10.3.0
10.3.1
.
.
10.3.9
10.4.0
.
.
10.4.4
Do you see a pattern?

I don't care how many times John McGhie says it's solely Apple's
problem, although recently he also sort-of admitted that MS *might*
have chosen to watch the wrong event and hadn't bothered to change to
the other one.

If there were just *one* other product that mucked up scrolling on the
second screen... I'd cut him some slack ;-)

John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]

unread,
Feb 9, 2006, 9:26:14 PM2/9/06
to
Oh, don't cut me ANY slack on this issue, Elliott :-)

Yeah, as far as I am concerned, Microsoft is watching a deprecated event,
and they need to change that.

But from what I also know, "changing it" is a very large job. This flag
gets checked any time Word does anything that might affect the content of
the screen display. Since that is just about everything Word does, there's
a call to this flag just about every time Word does "anything".

Currently, Microsoft can legitimately claim that the Apple OS X
documentation says this flag "should be maintained current by the operating
system", and thus, it "should" work, even if it is the old way of doing
things.

In the meantime, making a change this fundamental to a program this complex
is "not" a trivial exercise. Microsoft Office is way more complex than OS
X: there are very few packages on the Mac that get to this level of
complexity. If you "make a small change" and *break* something, you can
live in VERY exciting times...

The whole of Office is in the process of a major re-write to move to
MacIntel and XML. This issue (and many others...) may be fixed in that
operation. On the other hand, if the choice we have is "Occasionally Word
munges its display on dual-monitor boxes" vs "Microsoft Office is not
available on MacIntel", I think I know which choice we would all make.

Cheers

On 10/2/06 12:30 AM, in article 090220061330468862%nos...@yrl.co.uk,
"Elliott Roper" <nos...@yrl.co.uk> wrote:

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email

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