Remove Office Registration doesn't work!

[penguinlover]

I have the Student edition of Office 2004 which comes with 3 licences.
My daughter recently bought a new Mac and inadvertently entered the
Licence # which I have of my Mac. We are on a home network. The result
is that we cannot both use Office at the same time.

After doing a Search in Microsoft's Mac support pages, I found the
instructions for changing the Licence information, however it seems to
come unstuck once you click the ker to Remove Licence Information. A
box comes up saying you have to remove certain files before you can go
further and then lists all the Microsoft software on my Mac. How do I
know which ones to delete?

I feel sorely tempted to just uninstall 2004 and then reinstall, but
there's go to be an easier way.

 

[Mickey Stevens]

With Office 2004, you shouldn't need to remove any files. Simply go to the
/Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Additional Tools/Remove Office/ and
launch the "Remove Office" application. When it opens, hold down the Option
key, and click the "Remove Licensing Information Only" button. You can then
enter in another key.

 

[penguinlover]

With Office 2004, you shouldn't need to remove any files. Simply go to the
/Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Additional Tools/Remove Office/ and
launch the "Remove Office" application. When it opens, hold down the Option
key, and click the "Remove Licensing Information Only" button. You can then
enter in another key.

When I do that after holding down the Option key and pressing Remove
Licence Information, I then get another box come up telling me that
it's checking for files that have to be removed first, then I get the
list of Office apps from 1998 onwards asking me to select which files
to remove. It's as if it has ignored the Remove Licence Information
request and just goes to removing the whole programme. It obviously
hasn't removed the Licence info as I can still open and work with Word
without having to re-enter the info.

 

[John McGhie]

Eeeewww... You have more than one version installed?

Hmmm... I am not sure what it will do then.

I think you better try again on your Daughter's computer: change the licence
key on that one.

Or: Proceed on your own computer to remove ALL the versions, then put them
back with the correct licence keys.

Sorry...

When I do that after holding down the Option key and pressing Remove
Licence Information, I then get another box come up telling me that
it's checking for files that have to be removed first, then I get the
list of Office apps from 1998 onwards asking me to select which files
to remove. It's as if it has ignored the Remove Licence Information
request and just goes to removing the whole programme. It obviously
hasn't removed the Licence info as I can still open and work with Word
without having to re-enter the info.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[penguinlover]

Eeeewww... You have more than one version installed?

Hmmm... I am not sure what it will do then.

I think you better try again on your Daughter's computer: change the licence
key on that one.

Or: Proceed on your own computer to remove ALL the versions, then put them
back with the correct licence keys.

Sorry...




--
Don't wait for your answer, click here:http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltdhttp://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

Surprised me too! I thought I only had Office 2004 installed which I
put on this computer when I bought it (the computer). I did what you
suggested before I wrote the first time. I asked it to get rid of 98,
which I thought it did. However, when I went back to begin the
proceedings again, it once more showed Office 98 installed.

As it's now getting very late I'm not going to try anything else until
tomorrow. As you suggested, doing it on my daughter's computer might
be the easiest way to go.

 

[Barry Wainwright]

When I do that after holding down the Option key and pressing Remove
Licence Information, I then get another box come up telling me that
it's checking for files that have to be removed first, then I get the
list of Office apps from 1998 onwards asking me to select which files
to remove. It's as if it has ignored the Remove Licence Information
request and just goes to removing the whole programme. It obviously
hasn't removed the Licence info as I can still open and work with Word
without having to re-enter the info.

That's expected behaviour - if it finds more than one office installation it
will ask you which installation you want to remove the license information
from.

Mickey is not quite right when he says 'no files need to be removed' - one
of the places that the license information is stored is in a hidden file
(but that's not the only place!), however, I suspect the misleading dialog
you are seeing comes from the fact the same message is displayed if you are
trying to remove office entirely, not just the license information.

What _should_ happen is that when you option-click to remove the license, it
will give you a list of installation - select one, and just that
installation should be de-licensed.

Be careful though! You may be the first person to try this with a mixture of
office 98 & Leopard, so there's no telling what it may _actually_ do!!
Backup first, but even is the office apps are removed, they can easily be
re-installed. The 'remove office' utility is designed to NOT touch your data
(except and customised templates you have in your application folders).

--
Barry Wainwright
Microsoft MVP (see <http://www.microsoft.com/mvp/> for details)
Visit the Entourage User¹s Weblog for Hints, tips and troubleshooting
information:
http://www.barryw.net/weblog/

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Backup first, but even is the office apps are removed, they can easily be
re-installed. The 'remove office' utility is designed to NOT touch your data
(except and customised templates you have in your application folders).

Info on backing up--aimed at Word, but should cover Office except
Entourage, whose data should not be touched anyhow (but is stored in the
Microsoft User Data folder)
http://word.mvps.org/mac/BackUpPrefs.html

 

[penguinlover]

Info on backing up--aimed at Word, but should cover Office except
Entourage, whose data should not be touched anyhow (but is stored in the
Microsoft User Data folder)http://word.mvps.org/mac/BackUpPrefs.html

Thanks for all the info. I'm not using Leopard, still using 10.4.11.
I've now deleted all the extraneous Office apps and now only have
Office 2004 on my hard drive. The nessage I get when I try to remove
just the Licence Info is a small box that reads " Before you can re-
enter your Microsoft Office licensing information, certain files that
you no longer need must be removed from your computer. To remove these
files, click Remove."

When I do that, the beachball spins for a while and them I'm brought
back to the Welcome to Remove Office box, and so the merry-go-round
begins again. I do regular back-ups to an external hard drive using
Super Duper, so I'm not worried about losing any files, and I don't
use Entourage. However, I don't really want to uninstall and then
reinstall Word as I would then have to go through and do all the
updates.

I'll see what happens on my daughter's computer and then let you know.
Gosh it's tempting to just use iWork!

Cheers