Fix non-responsive Office 2008 Setup Assistant

Mar 11, '08 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: ephramz

In addition to this problem with installing Office 2008 on a non-startup disk, I've had an issue where for one user the Office Setup Assistant will never advance past the page where it requests contact info -- no matter how many times you hit Continue. There are no apparent errors, and I could find no postings about this on the internet. Then on the MacCast podcast this week, about 40 minutes in, caller Dave describes a solution to this vexing issue. I wanted to get it in black and white for people to find more easily.

It seems this is an issue related to permissions or accessibility of the ~/Documents folder. In Dave's case, the Office installer had set the ownership wrong on this folder, and in my case, there was a broken symbolic link to this folder. Either way, the Setup Assistant couldn't access the folder, but didn't complain about it.

I fixed the broken link, and all was well again. If you're having similar issues, make sure in the Finder (with Get Info) or Terminal (ls -l) whether you have read/write permission for your ~/Documents folder, and you should be able to get past this problem. Much thanks to Adam Christianson and Dave at the MacCast for finding this solution.

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