MSOffice "critial update" crashes before finishing, now nothing works

[duggram]

Installed MSOffice on my MBP with SL already installed. Office immediately wants to be updated with a "critical update" which is 200+ MB. Nearing the end of the update I get a message that says the update had a technical error, and it then shuts down. After this nothing in Office works.

Then I tried to post a message on MS's Mactopia forum and it won't let me log in. So I can't post, and I can't create a new account.

I dragged the corrupted Office to the trash (their uninstall program wouldn't work either). Reinstalled Office and everything works. But it's not updated.

Any suggestions on how to deal with the update?

 

[Mr.Texor]

I had a similar problem. I did an uninstall using the uninstall app after the 2nd installation. Then re-installed. After that, I was able to update office...

 

[duggram]

So now I'm starting with a clean Office install (i.e. drag main folder to trash), installing all updates in order, and restarting the mac between attempts.

Upgrades 12.1.1, 12.1.5, and 12.1.9 worked fine. Both Excel and Word started. Both About dialogs report the appropriate version.

Upgrade 12.2.1 could not get past the "searching for drives" stage.

Upgrade 12.2.0 finds the previous install, but can't get past the 2nd "running install scripts" before it stops with a warning that says something like "Installation Failed. ".

After two restarts 12.2.0 still can not find a previous install. So I'll go through the same process (fresh install and successive upgrades) but I will stop at 12.1.9.

Can anyone offer any advice on how I can get 12.2.0 to install?

 

[nadyne]

So now I'm starting with a clean Office install (i.e. drag main folder to trash), installing all updates in order, and restarting the mac between attempts.

The first issue that I see is that you're installing more updates than you need to. That shouldn't impact anything, but I mention it in case it does.

When you first install Office, launch Word, and see what its version number is. If it's 12.0.0, then you can install 12.1.0, 12.2.0, and 12.2.1 (in that order). If it's 12.1.0, then you just need to install 12.2.0 and 12.2.1. You don't need to go through 12.1.3, 12.1.5, ..., on the way to 12.2.0, it's got all of those updates included.

I would uninstall Office, reinstall off of your disc, and then go through the updates (with reboots in between). If you still get the issue, can you post a screenshot of the error?

Regards,
Nadyne.

 

[duggram]

About the same time I posted my last message MS support started working with me. The only solution we came up with was to do an Erase & Install of 10.5, then install MS Office and let it update itself. Then I did an upgrade with 10.6. This didn't take that long and I end up with a little bit faster laptop.