Reinstalling OneNote

[Stephen R. Diamond]

For reasons that are probably not germane, I find I should reinstall
Office 2003. Microsoft has a procedure for how to do this thoroughly. But
it seems OneNote is enough a part of Office that it must be first
uninstalled along with Word, Excel, and Outlook.

I am told that to reinstall Office applications, you need the CD. This
comes as a surprise, because I cannot find my OneNote 2003 CD, having made
no great effort to keep track of it. I have the serial number, of course.
Who worries about CDs in this day of instant broadband downloads, right?

The short of it: is there a way to reinstall OneNote after uninstalling
Office that does not require having retained the CD. Is there anything
downloadable that works?

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Hi Stephen,

For reasons that are probably not germane, I find I should reinstall
Office 2003. Microsoft has a procedure for how to do this thoroughly. But
it seems OneNote is enough a part of Office that it must be first
uninstalled along with Word, Excel, and Outlook.Th

I don't quite get why you'd need to remove and reinstall OneNote 2003
just to reinstall Office 2003? What did you to do your Office that you
cannot fix with detect & repair? ON shares some components with Office,
so yeah, you can't 100% remove Office 2003 without ON (it should
disappear from add/remove programs though), but for most issues that
should be sufficient?

I am told that to reinstall Office applications, you need the CD. This
comes as a surprise, because I cannot find my OneNote 2003 CD, having made
no great effort to keep track of it. I have the serial number, of course.
Who worries about CDs in this day of instant broadband downloads, right?

Sorry, but I do. I still have Win95, Win98, WinME, NT4, Win2000, WinXP,
Office 97, Office 2000, Office XP and Office 2003 CDs...If need be, I
can probably dig out a few versions of DOS as well (yes, I am a pack rat
when it comes to computers).
Legal software is often times not downloadable, even nowadays.

The short of it: is there a way to reinstall OneNote after uninstalling
Office that does not require having retained the CD. Is there anything
downloadable that works?

Legal Microsoft software is generally not downloadable. You can download
trial and beta versions, but that's it. I don't know anything about the
ON 2003 trial software, so I can't tell you whether you could download
that one and then use your serial number with it.

There should be a directory MSOCache on your computer (probably hidden).
In it, you might be able to find the full ON setup program as copied
from the CD. Look through all its subfolders and find all that have
files that sound like they could be OneNote. Make a copy of those
folders somewhere outside MSOCache before you remove OneNote (as ON
setup will delete them). Then try to reinstall ON from those files. I
say try, because I have no idea whether this will work or not. I give
you a 50/50 chance...

The better idea is to tell us:
a) what's wrong with your Office 2003 installation that you feel the
need to reinstall?
b) why do you have to remove ON 2003 as well to fix the problem you are
having?

Patrick Schmid

 

[Stephen R. Diamond]

Your recounting how you retain copies of Office 97 inspired me to look
some more. My search was successful this time, as was the whole
reinstallation process.

I'll reply to your questions, because the answers might be instructive or
at least of some general interest. The Microsoft tech advised that I
reinstall Office (provided I had the disks) to solve the problem I
presented to her: Office update was unable to determine what updates I
needed. That isn't really a big problem. I was more interested in
recovering the ability to install Word add-ins. I suspected the update
problem and the add-in problem were connected, which they were.

The tech reasoned that I seemed to be missing some critical validation
files, and a reinstall was the most efficient way to correct the problem,
when Detect and Repair failed. Detect and Repair reported that it
couldn't find the installation files. Whatever repair Detect and Repair
accomplished when I successfully ran it today after some diffling didn't
solve anything.

srdiamond

The uninstall procedure includes and centers on removing the Office 11
registry branches in two places. One of these branches contains numerous
settings pertaining to OneNote.

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Your recounting how you retain copies of Office 97 inspired me to look

some more. My search was successful this time, as was the whole
reinstallation process. Great!

The tech reasoned that I seemed to be missing some critical validation
files, and a reinstall was the most efficient way to correct the problem,
when Detect and Repair failed. Detect and Repair reported that it
couldn't find the installation files. Whatever repair Detect and Repair
accomplished when I successfully ran it today after some diffling didn't
solve anything.

Interesting problem. I have run myself sometimes into the issue that
Office setup demands a CD (you provide the CD) and it still demands a
CD. The problem seems to be that it needs a CD with a certain SP
slipstreamed, but of course you don't have that. Generally the presence
of the MSOCache folder should prevent this problem, but it doesn't
really do that for me all the time...

Patrick Schmid