Uninstalling Office 2007 Pro Trial

[jonde]

My trial version expired recently and I purchased a full version for
Academics. When I attempt to install the new product, I get an error message
that states that I must uninstall any prerelease versions and associated
technologies. I have searched my entire hard drive for anything that remotely
looks like Office 2007 or Office 12 and have removed them but I continue to
get the same error message. What other avenues should I take to rectify this
problem because I am out of ideas.

 

[jonde]

I did the system restore as you suggested. Apparently the reason that I
manually deleted the files was that I was unable to locate an uninstall
wizard and the program is not listed in the add/remove program list. Do I go
back and re-install the trial over and see if I get ther uninstall wizard? Or
do I just shoot the machine?j/k I had all of the files uninstalled except for
one that would not allow me to delete it.

 

[Tim Feld]

If I understand your post correctly, it sounds like you did not use the
"Uninstall" utility to get rid of the trial version but instead manually
erased files. If that is correct, that is the cause of your problem. Windows
isn't aware that you erased the files...as far as it's concerned, the trial
version is still installed.

I'm going to assume you are running at least Windows XP. If so, you could
try using System Restore and restore your PC to a point in time right before
you began erasing the files. Then go to Control Panel and use the Add-Remove
Programs utility to uninstall the trial version.

If that doesn't work, try re-installing the trial version and then uninstall
it (via Add-Remove Programs).

For future reference, it is hardly ever a good idea to manually erase files
to get rid of a program. That only worked back in the days of Windows 3.0 and
DOS.

Good luck.

Tim

 

[Scott]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928218

This KB article resolved a similar error when trying to uninstall MSO2007.
I used the evaluation version earlier, and couldn't uninstall it. The
problem file for me was msohevi.dll. It gives an access denied error when
you try to delete it. I had to follow the instructions in
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928218, and the office 12 folder still
wouldn't delete, so I changed the office12 folder to office12old and reboot
and was finally able to remove the file with filetorment.

I strongly suggest that you do these registry changes only if you are very
experienced and familiar with using regedit. I've been using it for over 10
years, and this procedure gave me a headache.

Scott

 

[Tim Feld]

Scott's suggestion is a very good one. And I agree that you should give it a
try only if you are experienced and confident with editing the registry. One
slip of the keyboard and you could be looking at a Windows re-install (that
may be a bit of a stretch but the point is you really need to be careful).
Make sure to make a backup of the registry before you start. And create a
System Restore point.

That's odd that Office 2007 didn't show up in Add/Remove programs. I know
sometimes when the list gets pretty long it's easy to miss an entry. It
should be called "Microsoft Office Professional 2007" or something like that
depending on your version. You can click on the "Name" column header to sort
the list alphabetically.

I should have thought of this before but I doubt if re-installing the trial
will work since it has already expired. Windows will know you had a trial
version installed and it shouldn't allow you to try it again...otherwise
people would simply keep re-installing the trial and never pay for it. The
only way around that is re-installing Windows.

Check this out:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

It's a Windows Installer CleanUp utility. It may be worth a try.

Tim