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Using Microsoft Office 2008 with network and mobile accounts this year was very painful (with the software being unbearably slow or crashing). Aside from redirecting the cache, what should be done so that office can be used successfully on Leopard and Tiger?

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By "network/mobile accounts" do you mean you open the files in a remote folder on slow connection? – splattne♦ May 15 '09 at 19:04
When a user does not have a local account on a machine but exist in your Open Directory (based on Open LDAP and other services), they can log into a machine bound to the directory and their home folder will be mounted over the network (usually using AFP). A mobile account (or Portable Home Folders) duplicates and synchronizes the user's home directory between the local computer and the network store. We use them over 100MB/s ethernet, and have tried using them over WiFi (which is a bad idea!) – Clinton Blackmore May 16 '09 at 16:26
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At my workplace we use Office without any pain after redirecting the cache (as should be done if network accounts are being used) and ensuring a folder called .TemporaryItems is saved at the root of every share. If that folder does not exist you'll run into issues with Office being unable to save.

Have you been able to see via the crash logs or other logs as to possible reasons for the Office apps to be crashing (beyond a possible corrupted preference file)? The reason I mention a corrupted preference file is that I did have one user's whose copy of Word was unbearably slow and would crash once an hour or so until we deleted the preferences file.

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I have trolled the logs on occassion. I find crash logs to be particularly difficult to make any sense of (and I am a programmer and have a rought idea or what it means). We're hoping that this was in part the AFP bug, and our systems seem happier at 10.5.6, but Word caused us so much grief that I am loathe to install it ever again. – Clinton Blackmore May 16 '09 at 16:29
One note to be aware of: 10.5.6 has a nasty issue on Intel machines that will cause them to kernel panic if certain Office fonts are installed in ~/Library/Fonts. If you redirect ~/Library/Fonts already it's a non-issue. – Chealion May 16 '09 at 17:10
+1 for the ~ Fonts heads-up – username May 16 '09 at 20:28
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I had many issues until my exchange servers got the latest roll up.

I was reading microsoft site..I can't find the article...that the fonts, and the latest roll up on exchange would lesson errors in sync, thus lowering time outs.

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Well, as we aren't using exchange at all (and, on the whole, we are using Mail instead of Entourage), it must be a different issue. – Clinton Blackmore May 17 '09 at 22:56
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