Repair Office 2008 non-startup-disk install issues

Mar 03, '08 07:30:02AM

Contributed by: ephramz

Another bug in Microsoft Office 2008 that I just discovered (and which is not listed on their Known Bugs page) is that if you install on a disk other than the startup disk, the installer stupidly puts the Fonts, Automator, and Application Support folders into the install disk's /Library, rather than the system disk's Library (i.e. in the root /Library folder), which is where all the apps look for it. So when I installed Office 2008 this way, none of the apps could find the Help app, among other problems.

$ cd "/Library/Application Support"
$ sudo ln -s "/Volumes/Installed disk name/Application Support/Microsoft" .
$ cd ../Fonts
$ sudo ln -s "/Volumes/Installed disk name/Fonts/Microsoft" .
$ cd ../Automator
$ sudo ln -s "/Volumes/Installed disk name/Automator" .
You only need the last two lines if you have the non-student edition. Also, the system won't let you run the last line if you already have that directory. I have the student edition, so I'm not sure exactly how files are installed in the Automator directory. This may also work if you linked it into your ~/Library instead, but then you would have to do it for each user.

Then just restart whichever Office app you have running, and the Help app should actually run.

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