10.3: Office v.X reinstallation tips

Nov 06, '03 10:49:00AM

Contributed by: Norm Nager

A thread in the Apple Discussions started with the story of how somebody who installed 10.3 lost his Microsoft Office X User Data -- addresses, email, notes, tasks, calendar, dictionary, templates and tried a few strategies for rebuilding the database and ended up corrupting it. That can happen easily, so here are a few preventive tips other than very frequently backing-up to safe locations the Documents/Microsoft User Data folder.

I did an erase-and-clean install of 10.3. After installing Microsoft Office X (and all of its updates through 10.1.5), I dragged over from my other drive the entire OS 10.2.8 Documents folder and, effectively, replaced the Documents/Microsoft User Data folder created by the installation of MS Office. Before I had an external drive, I simply went into my Retrospect backup set and marked for restore Documents/Microsoft User Data folder.

A trick I learned for those times when one has to do a clean install or just re-install Office without going through the pain and tedium of doing a lot of extra work:

  1. In Document/Microsoft/User Data, alias my custom dictionary, personal templates and Word "Normal" files.
  2. The custom dictionary alias I move to my Library -> Preferences -> Microsoft folder to replace the one created by installation of the program.
  3. The aliases of the rest I move to Applications -> Microsoft Office -> Templates. I move the personal templates into the subfolder "My Templates." The "Normal" alias from Documents replaces the "Normal" file in the full Templates folder.
Finally, I've found some exceptionally helpful information when I've had any questions about or problems with Office X components on lots of issues in the Microsoft News Servers for Mac (available when you go into Entourage Mail), and in the Office X "MVP and FAQ pages" on the Microsoft website.

[robg adds: I couldn't find the "MVP and FAQ pages" on the Microsoft site, but this page is the main support page for office v.X. When I upgraded my machines, I just dragged my fully configured Office v.X folder from my backup to my upgraded box, along with the Microsoft user Data folder, and all was good to go...]

Comments (10)


Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20031101155614324