Office not in software list, can't uninstall

[ednaz]

I have Office installed on my computer, and wanted to uninstall it. When I
go to Control Panel/Add or Remove Programs, none of the office components
appear. Hard to uninstall something that the computer doesn't know is there.
When I open Word or PPT or any other Office program, and try to do "detect
and repair", it fails with the message "can only do this on programs that are
installed." I checked to see if they are activated correctly, and when I
select that from the menu, it tells me that (each component) is activated. I
even had an Office Update dowload and run properly, but it doesn't show up in
the Add or Remove Programs list.

If I go to the %windir%\installer windows and try to do uninstall from there
using the instructions that show up here (and the .msi files DO show up there)
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/928218
I get "can't uninstall unless the program is installed" as a message.

I can't figure out how they disappeared from the logical places, but I want
to uninstall all of the Office Suite. Any ideas?

I want to get all of them uninstalled, but there's no way I can do it - any
aspect of the computer that is about unins

 

[Arun]

Why dont you call up tech support. Those guys will be able to fix it for you.

By the way KB 928218 should have worked. Probably you did not follow it
correctly.

 

[ednaz]

Seems that 928218 is sequential, and the first few steps don't work. When I
right click on the .msi files for office, and try to uninstall them, I get
"this action is only valid for products that are installed." Hmmm. They
show up in menus, I use them, they have been properly activated - but when I
right click on the Office related .msi files, as shown in 928218, I'm told
that I can't uninstall the .msi files because the product isn't installed.

I'm considering just going in and crushing everything in the registry, as is
shown later on in 928218, but I'm afraid of malware like behavior, where
removing it from the registry just prompts a reinstallation of it. Or worse,
I'll have some parts of the OS where there will be artifacts from Office
hanging around, others not, and I don't want system instability.

Thanks for the suggestion - if you KNOW that wiping the traces from the
registry, then deleting all the files, will work and produce a stable system,
I'd be a lot happier.

I'm not terribly thrilled about calling Microsoft and paying them to fix a
problem that should be impossible to occur if the software is written to
rules. I work for a company that builds a lot of software, and this is
exceptionally bad software behavior.