Moving Office applications around

[Rob]

When installing Mac Office 2004, it installs everything in a seperate
folder /Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/ ... I personally like a
clean apps folder and no subfolders, since I don't have a million
applications installed.

Most likely (can anyone confirm this? it is, after all, still
microsoft) moving the Word/Excel/Powerpoint.app files to a different
location will not effect it's operation. However, I'm left with all
those other files like Clipart and Shared Applications ... can I move
those somewhere else too?

Any help regarding the moving of (parts of) Mac Office 2004 after
initial installation would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Ramón G Castañeda]

When installing Mac Office 2004, it installs everything in a seperate
folder /Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/ ... I personally like a
clean apps folder and no subfolders, since I don't have a million
applications installed.

Most likely (can anyone confirm this? it is, after all, still
microsoft) moving the Word/Excel/Powerpoint.app files to a different
location will not effect it's operation. However, I'm left with all
those other files like Clipart and Shared Applications ... can I move
those somewhere else too?

Any help regarding the moving of (parts of) Mac Office 2004 after
initial installation would be greatly appreciated!

I can't vouch for MS applications, but many other applications (Adobe
applications like Photoshop and Illustrator, for example) DO MALFUNCTION if
you move or rename the folder.

Additionally, you might have trouble applying future updates to the Office
components.

Personally, I would advise against it.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

When installing Mac Office 2004, it installs everything in a seperate
folder /Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/ ... I personally like a
clean apps folder and no subfolders, since I don't have a million
applications installed.

Most likely (can anyone confirm this? it is, after all, still
microsoft) moving the Word/Excel/Powerpoint.app files to a different
location will not effect it's operation. However, I'm left with all
those other files like Clipart and Shared Applications ... can I move
those somewhere else too?

Any help regarding the moving of (parts of) Mac Office 2004 after
initial installation would be greatly appreciated!

Unlike nearly all OS9 applications, some OS X apps do have their
operation affected if you move or rename their folders. Office is a
suite - apps are not purely standalone - each requires the applications
and other files in the Office and Shared Applications for full
functionality.

You may in fact be able to move some or all of them. Or it may break
them. I would, however, *strongly* advise you to keep the Microsoft
Office 2004 folder intact. At the very least, you'll have to reset
default file paths within the applications.

And updating will be a nightmare. Each update of Office v.X affected
*many* more files than the just the main applications. Any updaters will
expect to find those files in certain locations relative to the main
folder, and you almost certainly will not be able to use the new auto
update functions in Office 04.

You may find that you can install the entire Microsoft Office 2004
folder elsewhere, and put aliases to the main apps in your Application
folder. However, if you have multiple accounts on your machine, you'll
need to put the folder in a location where each account can access it.