Microsoft Office & Limited Accounts

[gconnery]

Looks like I'm not the only one having this problem.

After a recent automatic update, presumably to Office, the limited account
on my Windows XP MCE computer started misbehaving.

If you tried to launch IE, Word, or Excel you would get a popup:

"Preparing to install:
Please wait while Windows configures Microsoft Office Basic Edition 2003"

You could wait, and this would seemingly complete, then launch again and
again and again. If you cancelled it you could get into IE anyway.

I first tried a repait of Office. Didn't do anything. Tried uninstalling
and reinstalling. After all of the patches had been applied again up to the
current date (About shows 11.8026.8028 as of Tues 25 Jul 2006), the problem
no longer occured with IE, but continued to occur with Word and Excel.

Changing the account from Limited to Administrator resolves the problem (you
never see the popup), but it reappears if you change the account back.

I have seen no resolution for this. Honestly, it you can't use Word in a
Limited Account then the feature is pretty useless.

 

[Susan Ramlet]

Hi, gconnery,

Did you change the limited account's permissions to administrator, or did
you log in as an administrator?

I've seen a fix where if you change the limited account's permissions to
administrator, let the installer run its course, then change it back to
limited permissions, it will resolve the matter. If the popup doesn't
appear, try changing the account's permissions to full, then run Office
setup again, then change it back to limited permissions.

Icky, but see if it resolves the issue.

 

[gconnery]

Susan,

I'm a little unclear on your question, but here goes.

After reinstalling, with the limited account still in place, I found that
the behavior was till there (popup Install on launch of Word). I changed the
account in question to an adminstrator account then tried again to see if
this would allow the popup install to complete. It did not. Rather, there
was no popup at all. Word just came up immediately with no errors. I then
switched the account back to limited and tried again. The behavior
manifested itself again.

I did not (yet) try making the secondary account an adminstrator during a
complete uninstall/reinstall of Office, which I assume is what you're
suggesting.

And yes, this is a pain, as I have already spent a few hours on this. I may
attempt it sometime soon however. When I do, I'll post the results here.

As I say though, it is clear from posts here and elsewhere that I'm not the
only one having this problem. Just do a google search and you'll find many
of these other people yourself.

Glenn

 

[Susan Ramlet]

Yes, that's what I was suggesting. Please do post back if you have time to
give it a try.

Susan