error message, cannont open powerpoint or reinstall office 2003

[9patch]

in my start menu, my open office document and new office document shortcuts
are no longer operational, so I tried to reinstall office 2003 and got this
similar error message, error message says that a patch cannont be opened, any
help would be greatly appreciated

 

[Mary Sauer]

You receive the "This patch package could not be opened" error message in an
Office program
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/295823/en-us

 

[9patch]

HI Mary,
thank you for your response but unfortunatly I ran the Windows Installer
CleanUp Utility and this solution has not repaired the problem. Do you have
any other suggestions? Thank you.

 

[Beth Melton]

After using the Windows Installer Clean-up Utility to remove the
Registry entries for your Office installation, did you reinstall
Office?

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[9patch]

Hi Beth,
No I was unable to uninstall office 2003 because the error message "This
patch package could not be opened. Verify that the patch package exists and
that you can access it, or contract the application vendor to verify that
this is a valid Windows Installer patch package." this error message is
preventing me from uninstalling office 2003. Any other suggestions?
Thanks,
Ninepatch

 

[Mary Sauer]

Did you open the Cleanup utility and select Office to remove?

 

[Beth Melton]

The reason you are encountering this issue is due to a corrupt or
missing file used by the Windows Installer.

You aren't supposed to try and uninstall Office. You need to use the
Clean-up utility to remove the reference to Office 2003. This will
make the Windows Installer 'think' Office isn't installed. At that
point you will be able to reinstall Office and recreate the Windows
Installer entries.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/