Can't remove MS Office Test Drive

[carl.sunshine]

I can't seem to remove test drive. I have seen some previous posts, so
I tried to Repair disk Permissions first, then ran Remove Office from
the folder called Office 2004 for Mac Test Drive. It searches for
files to remove, but the results are blank, and all it will do is
Quit. The folder is in my Applications, and has size of 330 MB. I am
running OS 10.4.8 on MacBook.

Problems started when I mistakenly dragged my app's from my old eMac
onto my new MacBook, instead of installing them from CD. I was able to
remove the main MS Office 2004 folder (by running Remove Office from
its Additional Tools folder), but this test drive folder does not seem
to want to leave, and when I reinstall Office, it does not work right,
thinking I still have Test Drive and 30 day limit. What should I try
next?

 

[little_creature]

Hello,
I'm not sure I have fully understood. Once you installed test drive on your
old maschine and then by mistake drag and drop it into your new Mac App's
folder. And now you cannot remove the test drive from new Mac. Is that
right?
IF so what I would try in this case I would try to install new test drive on
the top the corrupted one. Reapir disk permition. Remove it, run repair disk
permition utility and now try to install the proper Office version.
That's just my idea, not sure this will work.

(If you are not sure whether you run test drive - you can recognize the test
drive that you will be noticed each day when run office how many days you've
got left and in excel you can also see Excel test drive written in
background)

 

[dfritzin]

I can't seem to remove test drive. I have seen some previous posts, so
I tried to Repair disk Permissions first, then ran Remove Office from
the folder called Office 2004 for Mac Test Drive. It searches for
files to remove, but the results are blank, and all it will do is
Quit. The folder is in my Applications, and has size of 330 MB. I am
running OS 10.4.8 on MacBook.

Problems started when I mistakenly dragged my app's from my old eMac
onto my new MacBook, instead of installing them from CD. I was able to
remove the main MS Office 2004 folder (by running Remove Office from
its Additional Tools folder), but this test drive folder does not seem
to want to leave, and when I reinstall Office, it does not work right,
thinking I still have Test Drive and 30 day limit. What should I try
next?

I have had the same "problem" on my MacBook Pro, when I first got it.
Before I tried to install my copy of Office 2004, I ran the Office
uninstaller, but it didn't see any office files on the HD, even though
the Office Test Drive was there. I removed the Office Test Drive
manually, and then loaded Office 2004 from the CD, and have had no
problems since. I always figured that the problem may have had
something to do with the fact that I had never opened Office Test
Drive, so some files that the uninstaller needed weren't there. Anyway,
just manually removing the virgin copy of Test Drive worked fine for
me.

HTH

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Dave:

Quite correct: if you have NEVER allowed any component of the Office Test
Drive to start, then you will be able to remove it manually.

If you know what you're doing

It's not advice I would give to people in this forum. Because if "little
sister" or "little brother" has managed to start any of the Office products
on the computer before you get to it, and you don't run the Office Remover,
you get to live in a world of hurt. And unless you know Office and Macs
well, it will be really really difficult to recover.

If you run the Office Remover and it doesn't find anything, that's great, it
means none of the Office products have run, there are no preference files to
delete. Which is why it can't find the Test Drive You can then go
ahead and trash the folder.

I'm not exactly impressed with the design of this whole process. It's flaky
as hell, and we need to be careful what we advise people

Cheers

I have had the same "problem" on my MacBook Pro, when I first got it.
Before I tried to install my copy of Office 2004, I ran the Office
uninstaller, but it didn't see any office files on the HD, even though
the Office Test Drive was there. I removed the Office Test Drive
manually, and then loaded Office 2004 from the CD, and have had no
problems since. I always figured that the problem may have had
something to do with the fact that I had never opened Office Test
Drive, so some files that the uninstaller needed weren't there. Anyway,
just manually removing the virgin copy of Test Drive worked fine for
me.

HTH

--

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

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[dfritzin]

Hi Dave:

Quite correct: if you have NEVER allowed any component of the Office Test
Drive to start, then you will be able to remove it manually.

If you know what you're doing

It's not advice I would give to people in this forum. Because if "little
sister" or "little brother" has managed to start any of the Office products
on the computer before you get to it, and you don't run the Office Remover,
you get to live in a world of hurt. And unless you know Office and Macs
well, it will be really really difficult to recover.

If you run the Office Remover and it doesn't find anything, that's great, it
means none of the Office products have run, there are no preference files to
delete. Which is why it can't find the Test Drive You can then go
ahead and trash the folder.

I'm not exactly impressed with the design of this whole process. It's flaky
as hell, and we need to be careful what we advise people

Cheers

[snip]

John,

Thanks for the explanation. As I said, the first thing I did was to run
the uninstall program for Office Test Drive, but it didn't see
anything. That is when I figured I could just delete the whole thing. I
should say that this was on a brand new computer that no one else had
touched, so I knew that Office hadn't been started. Also, IIRC, I
checked for preference files in ~/Library/Preferences and in
/Library/Preferences before I loaded my copy of Office 2004.