MacOS – Why are some apps keep running in OS X even if I quit them

applicationsmacosms officeskype

At least three apps are now doing the following:

In its menu, I click on quit
It starts quiting but
then never finish quiting.

I can switch to it. The icon in the dock bar shows it is running. The menu is there, but the Quit option is disabled.

What's going on?

It is happening with:
– Microsoft Word
– Skype
– Another one, not by Microsoft

After an update, Word is not doing it anymore. It is puzzling.

Best Answer

It is due to bugs. Most likely in those programs, or in the OS X system. Essentially the program never completes the "Quit" action, so it doesn't exit and thus stays running.

Another cause could be hardware error - such as a non-responding hard drive. If that was the case, you would be seeing problems everywhere and not just with the Quit menu option in a few programs.

If you want to investigate the specific cause on your machine, I would suggest using dtruss to see what system calls the application makes as you hit quit. It could for example be hanging waiting for a mutex/semaphore, or similar - suggesting a deadlock or livelock. In other words, a bug.

Related Solutions

MacOS – Following Mavericks upgrade, Microsoft Word closes silently right after opening

I have several Machines which run MS Office 2011 perfectly fine with Mavericks. I would suspect some corrupt settings or cache is the reason for your problem. Try the following:

try moving the Folder "~/Documents/Microsoft-User Data" somewhere else (f.e. the Desktop) and try starting Word
try moving the folder "~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office" somewhere else (f.e. the Desktop) and try starting Word

In both cases the Folder will be recreated with default settings, so if Word starts without problem again you know the source of your problems. If not you can delete the newly created folders and replace them with your previous one.

Please try that and post some feedback.

Update by asker: removing the above folders didn't help ... but removing ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.microsoft.Word.savedState did.

MacOS – How to show that the Internet connection is still up and active in menu bar

I made an AppleScript program that checks the internet using ping, and if it finds that your internet is down, it will alert you. You can get it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/j4i9keisp8r79sm/Internet%20Test.app.zip

If you want to make it yourself, then here is the code:

repeat
    try
        do shell script "ping -c 5 google.com"
    on error
        display dialog "You are not connected to the internet"
    end try
    delay 15
end repeat

Set the application as a start up item. If your internet breaks, it will alert you. You can get a notification center alert instead of a dialog by changing the line after on error to read

display notification "Internet is down"

Added bonus: if you have a Router that will automatically disconnect you after certain time of inactivity, this will prevent that, since you are always showing as active.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – Following Mavericks upgrade, Microsoft Word closes silently right after opening

MacOS – How to show that the Internet connection is still up and active in menu bar

Related Question