Installing office 2004 onto Mac os X

[richb59cc]

Hi,

As a new Mac user I am new to the game and loving everything, except when I tried to install Office 2004, it says it cannot run the application assistant since the classic environment is no longer supported.

I have tried to deactivate this under system preferences but cannot seem to find it anywhere.

Can anyone suggest an alternative?

Thanks so much!

 

[spinnerlys]

Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac OS was written for Mac OS X as far as I remember.
The Classic Environment you get asked for is for applications written prior to Mac OS X, namely Mac OS 8 or 9. Mac OS X has been with us for a decade, thus I wonder, where you did get such old software. Are you sure, that you have the correct MS Office CD?

Btw, since Apple has used Intel CPUs (2006), the Classic Environment is no longer supported on Intel Macs and especially since Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

Can you maybe post a picture of the installation CD or post more details?


Also have a look at the following links to learn more about Mac OS X:

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[Blue Velvet]

Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac OS was written for Mac OS X as far as I remember.

Yep, but for PowerPC Macs. On Intel machines, it runs through Rosetta which is an optional install on Snow Leopard. It's been a while since I installed Office 2004, I don't recall an 'application assistant', thought it was drag and drop install. Curious.

Anyway, installing Rosetta. Running a PowerPC app should bring up a prompt box to download and install it from Apple, or you can try installing it from the Snow Leopard DVD by opening the Optional Installs folder, opening Optional Installs.mpkg and then following the instructions. Then try installing Office 2004 again, see if that works.

 

[spinnerlys]

Yep, but for PowerPC Macs. On Intel machines, it runs through Rosetta which is an optional install on Snow Leopard. It's been a while since I installed Office 2004, I don't recall an 'application assistant', thought it was drag and drop install. Curious.

I know, I bought the bloody student edition when it came out. It run okay on my iBook and it still runs on my 2009 MBP, thus Classic was never needed.

Maybe the OP is confusing "Classic" with "Rosetta"?

OP, can you post a screenshot of the error message?

Taking screenshots in Mac OS X.
How to Use Preview for Basic Image Editing: Crop, Rotate and Resize
​

 

[Gregg2]

Um, I'm using Office for Mac 2004 on a Core 2 Duo Mac Mini. Did I miss something in the above posts?

Edit: If I have Rosetta, it's invisible.

 

[spinnerlys]

Um, I'm using Office for Mac 2004 on a Core 2 Duo Mac Mini. Did I miss something in the above posts?

Edit: If I have Rosetta, it's invisible.

As you might know, Apple used IPM CPUs using the PowerPC architecture until 2006, the year Apple released the first Intel Macs using the x86 architecture.
Universal Binaries (UB) were introduced, meaning if applications are written as UB, they could run on PPC and x86 Macs without further translation layers. But as many applications were still using PPC code, they had to be translated to run on x86 Macs, thus Rosetta (like the stone) was introduced, which allows running PPC code on x86 Macs. The performance is lowered though, as there is one additional layer between application and CPU, but the Intel CPUs made up for that. As MS Office was written before 2005/6, it was still using PPC code, the MS Office 2008 version was the first UB version of it.

Rosetta is invisible in that way, that it is not an application stored inside Applications or Utilities, but you can see, that an application is using Rosetta via Activity Monitor and the KIND column, where it says PowerPC for PPC applications.

The OP though has a different problem (maybe), as the MS Office 2004 installation asks for the Classic Environment, which was abandoned with the advent of x86 Macs and completely removed from Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
The Classic Environment allowed to run Mac OS 9.2.2 on PPC Macs coming with Mac OS X 10.0 to 10.4.