questions about re-installing 2004 on re-formatted drive

[KJ]

This post applies strictly to MS Office 2004; I have not bought 2008 (yet?). iMac 1.6GHz G5 PPC, 250GB Firewire drive with full backup of iMac drive.

I need to do an erase & install of Leopard (in hopes of solving system-wide printing issues that occurred after archive & install). I found some instructions for re-installing Office on the Entourage Help page and just want to make sure I understand completely. Numbered instructions are from “Move or Transfer from Another Computer”, which I would think is the functional equivalent of transferring from a backup drive to a freshly wiped boot drive.

1. Install Office and update [important]
Can I use the drag install method? I don’t know why I would want to go through any setup assistant. Update by using the MS Autoupdate app?

(2. Copy over the entire Microsoft User Data folder before opening Entourage. Put the MUD folder in your User's Document folder. Understood -- I know where the MUD folder goes.)

3. For preference files to copy over see Location of Microsoft Files to Backup
There’s no *data* in prefs files, right? Accounts, Categories, rules are all in the MUD folder, right? There doesn’t seem to be anything in Entourage preferences that I couldn’t recreate rather easily, no customization in Word or Excel I care about saving, so I’d rather just have fresh prefs. Does that seem sensible?

(4. Restart and run Repair Permissions after running updater. Understood.)

So at this point I have not yet opened any MS apps. As soon as I do, tho, it’s going to dump a bunch of fonts somewhere, some of which have newer versions included with Leopard. What should I do about this? That is, when Font Book shows duplicates, Can I disable the MS versions since Leopard is already using its own versions?

Thanks for your replies, suggestions, etc.

 

[Diane Ross]

1. Install Office and update [important]
Can I use the drag install method? I don¹t know why I would want to go through
any setup assistant. Update by using the MS Autoupdate app?

In 2004 install, drag and use setup assistant is the same.

I suggest downloading the individual files. They seem to have a better
success rate in installing. You'll links and what to install here:

(2. Copy over the entire Microsoft User Data folder before opening Entourage.
Put the MUD folder in your User's Document folder. Understood -- I know where
the MUD folder goes.)

It's possible the permissions might be somewhat munged. Let Entourage create
a new Microsoft User Data folder. Then check permissions for individual
folders and compare to your backup. You can then drag over the individual
files or the entire Microsoft User Data folder to replace the new blank
ones.

3. For preference files to copy over see Location of Microsoft Files to Backup
There¹s no *data* in prefs files, right? Accounts, Categories, rules are all
in the MUD folder, right?
Correct.

There doesn¹t seem to be anything in Entourage
preferences that I couldn¹t recreate rather easily, no customization in Word
or Excel I care about saving, so I¹d rather just have fresh prefs. Does that
seem sensible?

Good choice.

(4. Restart and run Repair Permissions after running updater. Understood.)

So at this point I have not yet opened any MS apps. As soon as I do, tho, it¹s
going to dump a bunch of fonts somewhere, some of which have newer versions
included with Leopard. What should I do about this? That is, when Font Book
shows duplicates, Can I disable the MS versions since Leopard is already using
its own versions?

The fonts in /Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office/Fonts/ were put
there by the CD Installer to act as a source, backup and repair. They're not
used directly by Office. At the first launch of an Office application they
are copied to ~/Library/Fonts/, replacing any older versions put there by
earlier versions of Office. These are the fonts used by Office and other
applications.

I like to use the Finder labels to color code my system base fonts. This way
you can tell what's original. You could similarly do the same for the
Microsoft fonts.

For Entourage 2008 users, fonts are installed in the root Library folder.
See this page for more details:

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/troubleshoot/bad_font.html>