Problem with help viewer in Office 2007

J

Jon Theil

Hi group,

I have a (new) problem with the help system in Office 2007. I can open the
help viewer, but the TOC is missing, I can not make a search (the field is
greyed out), the Home button does not work and to begin with, the style sheet
is wrong. Have tried to repair the installation - with no luck.
Any suggestions..?
 
C

Carolyn

Jon -

I have the same problem with my Office 2007.

Were you ever able to get your help search to work, and if so HOW?

Mine still just shows the field greyed out, i.e., not capable of searching.
 
J

Jon Theil

Hi Carolyn,

I am not completely sure. I have another machine going with a working
installation. That installation is running on Vista Ultimate, while the
problematic one is running on XP Pro. So I might mix them up in my head.
When it is working as intended, the search field is normal and I can search
the local help files or - if I chose that option - both local and web based
help.
I found out that on the problematic installation the help system only works
partially when I chose to search the web solutions. When I disable this
option, the help viewer - the actual program is "clview.exe" - cannot open
the files. These files are in XML format, and on the actual machine I had
Safari as the default program for this format. Now I have downgraded Internet
Explorer from 8.0 beta to 7.0 and removed the XML file association with
Safari. That didn't do the trick. So now I will reinstall Office (once again).
I will report back when that is done. If the problem remains, I am
completely lost...

Regards,
Jon
 
C

Carolyn

Hi Jon,

Thanks for responding back so soon.

My help search works fine on my notebook with Windows XP Home Edition but,
like you, it doesn't work on my PC with Windows XP Professional.

Re. >>When it is working as intended, the search field is normal and I can
search the local help files or - if I chose that option - both local and web
based help.<< Same with me.

The problem, on my side, is due to the search field not showing anything
when I type in it.

Let me know what happens when you reinstall office. (I fear doing that,
simply because it took forever to get the Solver (add-ins) to work when I
installed Office 2007.)

Thanks!
 
J

Jon Theil

Hi again Carolyn,

You are welcome. I would have been much happier if I had found a solution we
could both use.
I found a post regarding a similar issue:
http://forums.techarena.in/ms-office-support/669549.htm
And I tried to follow the steps of removing and reinstalling the .NET
framework and MSXML But with no luck.
After these steps and reinstalling Office 2007, I can open the help window
either connected to Office Online or not. But the search field is still
greyed out and the table of contents is still missing.
Why it is not possible to get back to a functioning search function even
after reinstalling all this stuff, is not clear to me. On the other hand,
even a complete deinstallation of Office do leave traces in the registry.
After reinstalling, every personal setting from the previos installation
reappeared.
A complete reinstallation of my notebook is not an option rigth now, so I
doubt I can solve the problem. A bit frustrating.
I guess it's a bad idea to exchange mail addresses. So I can only get back
to you if I find "the solution" by posting here. If you check the
notification option, you will receive a mail if I or somebody else get more
information.

Have a nice day,
Jon
 
C

Carolyn

Hi Jon,

I gave in and tried reinstalling Office 2007 again…. Of course nothing
changed, i.e., the help field still doesn't function correctly.

In all honesty, Office 2007 has been nothing more than a headache between
the Help search not working and Solver in Add-ins not working either.

We should get money back! (Sorry to put my frustration on you, but I doubt
MS would listen.)

Have a good a day too!
Carolyn
 
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