Why You Need to Uninstall Office 4.2 Before Installing 4.2.1

The information in this article applies to:

• Microsoft Setup for the Macintosh, version 1.0
• Microsoft Office for the Macintosh, version 4.2.1

SYMPTOMS

If you install Microsoft Office version 4.2.1, over an existing installation of Microsoft Office version 4.2, and you attempt to use Setup to modify your installation, you may receive unexpected results.

This situation also occurs with Mode 1 and Mode 2 administrative installations.

WORKAROUND

For best results, remove version 4.2 before you attempt to install version 4.2.1. You should also remove earlier Mode 1 and Mode 2 installations before you attempt an administrative installation of version 4.2.1. (Not only will this method of installation provide you with more available disk space, but the Setup program will not be installed over an existing administrative installation.)

MORE INFORMATION

When you install an application using Microsoft Office Setup, the Setup program keeps track of everything it installs on the disk, and writes file locations for shared application components (OLE servers, and so on) to the registry. Both the applications and the Microsoft Office Manager (MOM) use this registry information to determine what is available. If you install Microsoft Office version 4.2.1 over Microsoft Office version 4.2, the registry information may not correspond with what is actually installed on your hard disk drive. Any files that are common to version 4.2.1 AND version 4.2 installations will be double-counted in the registry. When you try to remove these components using Setup, they are not removed.

Although Setup overwrites the old version 4.2 table file with the version 4.2.1 table file, the registry entry still points to that file location as containing the Office 4.2 setup table file (STF). If you run MOM and choose Setup And Uninstall, you see two Office choices listed: Office 4.2.1 and Office 4.2 for the Power Macintosh. Choosing either one starts Office 4.2.1 Setup in maintenance mode. In this scenario, it is possible to accidentally remove Office 4.2.1 applications when you intend to remove Office 4.2 applications.

If you did a more complete installation of Microsoft Office version 4.2 than you did of Microsoft Office version 4.2.1, the applications installed with version 4.2.1 may behave unpredictably.