New 10-9-07 Office update Danger!! Word erased from HD!

[ndg98112]

Help!!

I just downloaded the Mac Office update (the one issued on 10-9-07)
through the Microsoft Auto update app, and the updated died in mid-
update with an error message saying that the updated encountered an
"unknown problem" and could not finish the update. I then clicked on
the Word icon on the Dock to see if Office was still functional, and
to my complete surprise, Word failed to load and displayed an error
message I've never seen before that stated "application not authorized
on this platform." Immediately afterwards, the Word icon on the Mac
Dock went gray and a large "X" appeared over it for three seconds, and
then the icon disappeared along with all the icons for various
appllications I have on the Mac. It erased the Word, Entourage,
Powerpoint, Excel and Messenger -all the MS icons but also erased 5
other non-microsaoft icons from the Dock too.
The kicker was however that this update error didn't just erase the
icons on the dock - IT ALSO ERASED WORD FROM THE HARD DRIVE!!!

This was a fully registered, fully paid legal Office installation. It
was not a student version.

Does anyone know what's up? Is reloading Office the only strategy?


Thanks,


ndg98112





(e-mail address removed)
View profile
More options Oct 11, 7:54 am
Hello
I have a big issue I have turned off (shutdown) my Macbook Pro and
after few hours when i turned on I did not find any emails on my
Entourage, even the email accounts have vanished.
On the top of this the Word completely vanished, I had to do a fresh
installation.
Did somebody has any idea what is going on.
I have office for Mac 2004.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Does anyone know what's up? Is reloading Office the only strategy?

Don't know what's up - the update worked flawlessly for me and several
clients.

If Word is really gone, then you *could* just load Word from your
install CD and reapply the 10.3.5, 10.3.6, 10.3.7 and 10.3.8 updates.

However, I'd suggest running the Remove Office app first, removing the
existing Office installation, reinstalling and applying all the updates.

Shouldn't take all that long, aside from the time to download the
updates.

 

[Randall Ainsworth]

I just downloaded the Mac Office update (the one issued on 10-9-07)
through the Microsoft Auto update app, and the updated died in mid-
update with an error message saying that the updated encountered an
"unknown problem" and could not finish the update. I then clicked on
the Word icon on the Dock to see if Office was still functional, and
to my complete surprise, Word failed to load and displayed an error
message I've never seen before that stated "application not authorized
on this platform." Immediately afterwards, the Word icon on the Mac
Dock went gray and a large "X" appeared over it for three seconds, and
then the icon disappeared along with all the icons for various
appllications I have on the Mac. It erased the Word, Entourage,
Powerpoint, Excel and Messenger -all the MS icons but also erased 5
other non-microsaoft icons from the Dock too.
The kicker was however that this update error didn't just erase the
icons on the dock - IT ALSO ERASED WORD FROM THE HARD DRIVE!!!

No problems with the update here.

 

[Mickey Stevens]

Don't know what's up - the update worked flawlessly for me and several
clients.

If Word is really gone, then you *could* just load Word from your
install CD and reapply the 10.3.5, 10.3.6, 10.3.7 and 10.3.8 updates.

Those all being "11." updates, as version 11 corresponds to Office 2004.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Oops - must have been looking at the subject line. Thanks for the
correction!

 

[kenbloom]

The same thing -- or something similar -- has happened to me. I
accidentally killed my update process when it was running. I re-ran
it, and the result was that the update was completed but my copy of
Word was gone. I am currently a continent away from my install CD, so
any advice on how to recover without it would be very helpful.
Thanks, best wishes.

KB

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I am currently a continent away from my install CD, so
any advice on how to recover without it would be very helpful.

It always amazes me how many people do updates "on the road".

Nonetheless, it happened. You don't need *your* physical CD - if you
have access to your CD key, then you can use any install CD (at least of
the same version). Check out a Mac shop, a user group, a friend with
Office, etc.

 

[jaime1007]

Help!!

I just downloaded the Mac Office update (the one issued on 10-9-07)
through the Microsoft Auto update app, and the updated died in mid-
update with an error message saying that the updated encountered an
"unknown problem" and could not finish the update. I then clicked on
the Word icon on the Dock to see if Office was still functional, and
to my complete surprise, Word failed to load and displayed an error
message I've never seen before that stated "application not authorized
on this platform." Immediately afterwards, the Word icon on the Mac
Dock went gray and a large "X" appeared over it for three seconds, and
then the icon disappeared along with all the icons for various
appllications I have on the Mac. It erased the Word, Entourage,
Powerpoint, Excel and Messenger -all the MS icons but also erased 5
other non-microsaoft icons from the Dock too.
The kicker was however that this update error didn't just erase the
icons on the dock - IT ALSO ERASED WORD FROM THE HARD DRIVE!!!

This was a fully registered, fully paid legal Office installation. It
was not a student version.

Does anyone know what's up? Is reloading Office the only strategy?

Thanks,

ndg98112

(e-mail address removed)
View profile
More options Oct 11, 7:54 am
Hello
I have a big issue I have turned off (shutdown) my Macbook Pro and
after few hours when i turned on I did not find any emails on my
Entourage, even the email accounts have vanished.
On the top of this the Word completely vanished, I had to do a fresh
installation.
Did somebody has any idea what is going on.
I have office for Mac 2004.

Same problem here, it seems the updater crash, the in reinstall wipe
out Word and its associated files, This is a serious screw-up since
they claim at Micrososft to do the update to prevent malicious erasing
of your files!

 

[JE McGimpsey]

This is a serious screw-up since they claim at Micrososft to do the
update to prevent malicious erasing of your files!

Assuming it's an MS problem (which is unclear, since there have been
thousands of successful updates for every problem posted here), this
update has *nothing* to do with preventing malicious erasing of your
files...

AFAIK, the update primarily corrects a problem that could cause a
specially engineered Word file to overwrite the computer's *memory* and
cause Word to crash.

 

[Diane]

Same problem here, it seems the updater crash, the in reinstall wipe
out Word and its associated files, This is a serious screw-up since
they claim at Micrososft to do the update to prevent malicious erasing
of your files!

This can happen with OS updates also. It problem seems to be more frequent
lately. One option you can take to protect your install is to zip it before
updating then if things go badly during the update you can revert to the
zipped files.