Cannot uninstall Office

[Joan Erlewine]

Out of the blue, Word wouldn't let me use Spell/grammar check. Error
message: "spellcheck is not installed on your computer". I ran the
uninstaller, it found the all the Office applications & fonts and
preferences, and said that they were removed and put into the trash.
When I checked the trash, there was nothing in it. I did the procedure
a second time, and the same results, and after restarting the computer
Office is indeed still installed. I have the Office:mac v.X Student
and Teacher edition, and the version I'm trying to uninstall wasn't
from this particular CD. Is this what is causing the problem, and is
there any way I can uninstall the corrupted Office from my Mac?
Joan

 

[smb]

I'm thinking you can just manually delete the program. Find word in
your application menu and delete it.

 

[Matt T]

I'm thinking you can just manually delete the program. Find word in
your application menu and delete it.

Not applicatin menu, the Applications folder. Also, go in Library folder
of your Home folder, then into Preferences, and delete everything Office
®elated there (there'll be a couple of com.microsoft.* files and a
Microsoft folder, at least).

MT

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Joan,

What uninstaller did you use? If it's the one on your Office 98 install CD,
that is most likely the problem. To uninstall and reinstall, follow this
procedure:

-- Download the Office Remover from
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx?pid=download&location=/mac/down
load/office98/remove_officetools.xml&secid=20&ssid=6&flgnosysreq=False>.

-- With all Office applications closed, run the Remover. That searches your
hard disk, and particularly your System folder, to make sure everything is
removed.

-- Rebuild the desktop.

-- Reinstall Office 98 from the CD.

-- Start each Office 98 application once to cause it to initialize itself.

-- Download and install the following updaters from Mactopia.com
(<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx#Office98>) in this
order:

Combined Updater for Office 98
Microsoft Office 98/Mac OS 9/Excel Y2K Updater
Microsoft Word 98 / PowerPoint 98 Updater
Microsoft Word 98 for Mac Security Update: Macro Vulnerability
PowerPoint/Excel Macro Updater
Microsoft Office 98 SSL Security Updater

There are other optional updaters which you can read about here:
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/download/default.asp?navindex=s10#Office98>

-- Rebuild the desktop.

Hope this helps.

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/WordMac/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>

 

[Joan Erlewine]

I've been repeatedly warned not to do that, that there will be bits
and pieces of Office lurking about my computer waiting to wreak havoc
on my life. That's what I wanted to do right away, but I'm afraid to.
I just don't know what to do. --Joan

 

[Joan Erlewine]

Hi Beth, I didn't use the Office 98 Cd installer. I used the
Office:mac v.X uninstaller. I never use the classic environment
anymore, and actually it didn't even occur to me to use the Office 98
CD. So the steps you outlined won't be applicable to my problem. My
problem is that I cannot uninstall Office v.X. I have the Student and
Teacher Edition. I ran the uninstaller, and it said that it had found
the apps & fonts & prefs, and moved them to the trash. That's what it
said, but not what it did. Everything is still in the Applications
Folder (OS X Application folder). The "alias" is still in the dock.
Documents created in Word open in Word. And the spell/grammar check
still cannot be summoned because it is "not installed on your
computer" egads I am so frustrated. What next?
Joan

 

[Beth Rosengard]

My apologies, Joan! I don't know how I got it into my head that you were in
Office 98. I must have mixed your post up with another somehow.

Well, in that case, I'm at a loss. I have never heard of a situation where
a proper uninstaller would not uninstall. Unless someone else has a better
idea, this is one of those rare occasions where I would recommend calling MS
support, even though it costs money (if you've used up your freebies). They
would also know if the fact that you're using an educational version of
Office makes a difference or not.

On the other hand, if you want to try manually removing Office X, you will
find a complete guide to doing so here:
<http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;323675&Product=maco
ffx>. If you follow the instructions exactly, you should be okay.

Sorry to be of so little help.

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/WordMac/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Hi Beth, I didn't use the Office 98 Cd installer. I used the
Office:mac v.X uninstaller. I never use the classic environment
anymore, and actually it didn't even occur to me to use the Office 98
CD. So the steps you outlined won't be applicable to my problem. My
problem is that I cannot uninstall Office v.X. I have the Student and
Teacher Edition. I ran the uninstaller, and it said that it had found
the apps & fonts & prefs, and moved them to the trash. That's what it
said, but not what it did. Everything is still in the Applications
Folder (OS X Application folder). The "alias" is still in the dock.
Documents created in Word open in Word. And the spell/grammar check
still cannot be summoned because it is "not installed on your
computer" egads I am so frustrated. What next?

First Repair Disk Permissions (/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility). It may
be that your permissions are fubared, preventing you from deleting anything
in the Application folder.

What do you mean by "the uninstaller"? You should use "Remove Office" app
found in the Value Pack on the Office v. X CD. use the Value Pack installer
to install Remove Office on your hard disk (it appears on your desktop
usually) if you don't have it there yet.

You said earlier:

I have the Office:mac v.X Student
and Teacher edition, and the version I'm trying to uninstall wasn't
from this particular CD. Is this what is causing the problem, and is
there any way I can uninstall the corrupted Office from my Mac?

Whoa. What does this mean? You now have Student and Teacher CD but you never
installed it? Instead you have some other version (a pirated version
perhaps?) installed? Or you're still using the free Test Drive? The Remove
Office on the CD should remove the Test Drive. I don't see why it wouldn't
remove a pirated version too.

Fix permissions, and try again. Just let it remove the items pre-checked by
default. Don't add fonts. This should work.

If, for some reason it doesn't then, yes, delete the Microsoft Office X
folder, the ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/ folder, and every file
beginning "microsoft.com..." in ~/Library/Preferences/. ("~" is your OS X
user folder.) That should take care of everything, including invisible
files. Empty the trash. Install Student & Teacher. I think that's v10.1.4,
yes? Apply the 10.1.5 updater. You should be OK now.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP Entourage
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Entourage you are using - 2001 or X.
It's often impossible to answer your questions otherwise.

 

[Joan Erlewine]

On 1/4/04 2:29 PM, in article
(e-mail address removed), "Joan Erlewine"

First Repair Disk Permissions (/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility). It may
be that your permissions are fubared, preventing you from deleting anything
in the Application folder.

What do you mean by "the uninstaller"? You should use "Remove Office" app
found in the Value Pack on the Office v. X CD. use the Value Pack installer
to install Remove Office on your hard disk (it appears on your desktop
usually) if you don't have it there yet.

You said earlier:


Whoa. What does this mean? You now have Student and Teacher CD but you never
installed it? Instead you have some other version (a pirated version
perhaps?) installed? Or you're still using the free Test Drive? The Remove
Office on the CD should remove the Test Drive. I don't see why it wouldn't
remove a pirated version too.

Fix permissions, and try again. Just let it remove the items pre-checked by
default. Don't add fonts. This should work.

If, for some reason it doesn't then, yes, delete the Microsoft Office X
folder, the ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/ folder, and every file
beginning "microsoft.com..." in ~/Library/Preferences/. ("~" is your OS X
user folder.) That should take care of everything, including invisible
files. Empty the trash. Install Student & Teacher. I think that's v10.1.4,
yes? Apply the 10.1.5 updater. You should be OK now.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP Entourage
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

1. I didn't repair permissions. I will do that, and try again.
2. I made a mistake referring to the "Remove Office" app as
"uninstaller".
3. I didn't use the Value Pack installer to install the Remove Office
app to my hard drive, I used the Remove Office installer. Perhaps this
is the problem?
4. I haven't installed the Student and Teacher CD yet because I was
told not to install it until I'd removed the corrupted version of
Office
5. I never owned the CD for the Office app that was installed on this
computer when I became its owner, so I guess you would call that a
pirated CD, I'm sorry I feel guilty about that, but now I own a
legitimate copy. Also, I'm not using the free Test Drive.
6. Thank you for all the advice.

 

[Joan Erlewine]

Repaired Disk Permissions. Installed Value Pack. Ran "Remove Office",
once again it said that it had found all the various apps (Word,
Excel, etc.), and put them in the trash. The trash can looked empty, I
opened it and there was the Word folder, and one or two more items (I
didn't write it down), I said empty trash, and it took just about a
split second to empty the trash which led me to believe that Office
was not removed. Which it wasn't! But spell/grammar check is working
again. Now I guess I'll just have to work with it and see what
happens? Is this weird?

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Joan:

No, it's not weird (well, *I* think it's weird, but it is the way Macs
work...)

The items are remaining in the trash because they are still in use by
running programs.

You need to re-start your system and THEN empty the trash to get rid of
them. This problem got worse under Unix, because applications are comprised
of multiple parts, not all of which exit when you quit the main application.

Cheers


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