OFF97: Files May Be Removed from Server During Installation

• Microsoft Office 97 for Windows
• Microsoft Office for Windows 95, versions 7.0, 7.0a
• Microsoft Office for Windows, versions 4.2, 4.2c, 4.3, 4.3c

WARNING: The information in this article has not been confirmed or tested by Microsoft. Some or all of the information in this article has been taken from unconfirmed customer reports. ANY USE BY YOU OF THE INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THIS ARTICLE IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. Microsoft provides this information "as is" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose.

SYMPTOMS

When you run the Microsoft Office 97 Setup program, you may receive the following alert message:

   The Microsoft Office Upgrade Wizard has detected one or more Office
   4.x or 95 components on your computer. Removing these components is
   recommended and will not affect your existing data.

   Remove ALL old Office 4.x and 95 components now?

CAUSE

This problem may occur if the following conditions are true:

• You installed Microsoft Office 97 on a computer on which an earlier version of Microsoft Office was installed.

  -and-

• The earlier version of Microsoft Office was installed from an administrative installation point on a network server.

  -and-

• You have administrative rights (this includes read, write, create, delete, and rename permissions) to the folder on the network server that contains the administrative installation of the earlier version of Microsoft Office.

WORKAROUNDS

To work around this behavior, use one of the following methods.

Method 1: Setup Removed the Items

If users of earlier versions of Microsoft Office begin receiving error messages because files have been removed from the network server by the Microsoft Office 97 Setup program, use the following steps:

1. Remove the administrative installation of Microsoft Office from the network server.

2. From a workstation, perform a new administrative installation of the earlier version of Microsoft Office to the same folder on the network server that contained previous administrative installation of Microsoft Office.

   NOTE: It is very important that you use the same folder name; otherwise, everyone who uses the earlier version of Microsoft Office may have to reinstall Microsoft Office.

Method 2: Setup Has Not Yet Removed the Items

To prevent this problem from occurring, verify that no user or administrator has full access to the folder that contains the earlier version of Microsoft Office. After the administrative installation of Microsoft Office is finished, you need only read-only access to the folder to install Microsoft Office.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Excel 97. This problem was corrected in Microsoft Excel 97 Service Release 1 (SR-1).

For additional information about SR-1, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q172475
   TITLE     : OFF97: How to Obtain and Install MS Office 97 SR-1