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Run Excel with user's folder on another drive Apps
If you put your User folder on a different partition under OS X, you get problems using Excel v.X. You'll see a message like "VBA English/Standard (VBAEN.OLB) object library not found" during launch, and after the workbook is open, you cannot record a macro. If you try to click "Disable Macros," Microsoft Excel quits unexpectedly.

Microsoft confirms this misbehaviour in their Knowledge Base article number Q322237. They recommend that you "Move the Users folder back to the hard disk partition that contains Mac OS X -or- reformat your hard disk to have a single partition!"

However, after some searching the net, I found this workaround by Brad Hutchings that resolves the issue without reorganising your whole system. I tried this, it works flawlessly so far. Here is Brad's hint as posted in microsoft.public.mac.office.excel:
At least in my setup, Excel seems to have problems with my home directory being on a different disk partition than the root OSX partition. I found this out by creating a temporary user with a home directory on the OSX partition and found that this user could run Excel with no problems.

So, here is what I did. I took the Carbon Registration Database file that Is created the first time you run any Office X program and deleted it from my home directory (it is in ~/Library -> Preferences -> Microsoft). I then copied the Carbon Registration Database file from the temporary user directory. I have been running this way for several days with no problems. Make sure you are not running any Office programs when you do this. YMMV, no doubt.
[Editor's note: I have not tested this myself.]
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Verified.
Authored by: james_sorenson on Nov 01, '02 10:16:22AM

Editor, consider it verified. I commend the author for thinking of posting it here. I had to do this 2 months ago (using the same Hutchings post as reference) in order to get the Palm QuickOffice working with Excel. It seems you never have to do it again, once you've done once. However, I keep another copy of the file from the temp-user, just in case.



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Intolerable
Authored by: gvitale on Nov 01, '02 11:01:53AM

It is just unbelievable that this bug hasn't been corrected after TWO OfficeX updates, and is really offensive what they propose as workaround: typically arrogant M$ behavior…



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Excel and users partition
Authored by: pservice on Nov 01, '02 05:57:35PM

I've had no problem with Excel v. X on two different machines. I run 3 partitions (more, actually, but they don't matter for this discussion): an OS X partition, a Users partition, and an Applications partition that includes most of the applications that do not come as part of the OS X installation. I installed Office on the Applications partition. All partitions are on the same physical disk. I'm currently running Jaguar, but had a similar arrangement under previous versions of OS X. I think I've applied all available updates to Office X.



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Excel works fine for me!
Authored by: BraindeadMac on Nov 02, '02 06:34:53AM

I wonder if the presence of this bug has something to do with how one has chosen to create their users partitions. The "old" way used by many (including myself) of using Netinfo to specify the volume name and creating symbolic links in 10.0 and 10.1 broke a number of applications (including Palm Desktop and Excel). However, using fstab to create separate mount points, see this link for example, http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20021011053443661, I have no problems with Excel macros (or Palm Desktop for that matter). Additionally, my Office installation was a fresh one after the partitions were created.



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Excel works fine for me... Now.
Authored by: mangee on Jan 28, '04 06:43:07PM
I have 5 partitions on Panther - basically Apps, Users, System, Linux, and Space. MS Office v.x 2003 installed on Apps. Using the fstab mount hack to mount partitions in the right place:
guru@eMac 12:37: df -hnl
Filesystem      Size   Used  Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/disk0s10   4.9G   3.5G   1.3G    73%    /
/dev/disk0s12   7.9G    1.2G   5.7G     24%    /Volumes/Linux
/dev/disk0s14    15G   2.1G    13G    14%    /Users
/dev/disk0s16   4.9G  1016M   3.9G    20%    /Volumes/Space
/dev/disk0s18   5.0G   2.1G   2.9G    42%    /Applications
Had problems with Carbon Registration Database "Error Loading DLL" "Object Library not registered" etc..
I Found that by deleting CRDB or Office Registration Cache X, I could allow files to open ok - until I quit word or excel.. then I would have to delete them again etc.

All fixed now (it seems) thanks for the hint.

I created a new user - and then used

sudo ditto -rsrc /Users/nuser /nuser
to shift the user to system partition. Changed home dir for user to /nuser in in NetInfo manager... and deleted /Users/nuser - rebooted logged in.. Ran MS Office (Word Excel) and registered (again). Got Carbon Registration Database form /nuser/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/... and copied into other users ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/..

Works fine now. Also copied same CRDB to 2 other machines (eMac G4/700 and iMac G3/333) and that fixed them as well...

See also NZMac Forums --
Mangee
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Run Excel with user's folder on another drive
Authored by: mmt369 on Mar 07, '08 02:55:59PM

Thanks for this hint. It works in Tiger, too.

I still use Office v.X 10.1.8, but on Tiger 10.4.11, not Panther. About four days ago Word and PowerPoint started crashing the second time any Office version was opened, and Excel gave "object library not registered". I traced this down to "~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Carbon Registry Database" or "Office Registration Cache X". Deleting either made the problem go away for one launch of an office product. Googling around, I found this hint, which fixed the problem. -- But I can't figure out why I had no problem for years after I moved /Users to another disk, and months since I moved /Applications to another disk.



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