Can't completely uninstall

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mike Storms
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Mike Storms

How can I COMPLETE uninstall Office 2003?

Two features in Outlook 2003 have quit working. I've tried uninstalling and
reinstalling Office, but it doesn't solve the problems. BUT, it's clear that
the uninstall routine is not removing all the files and/or registry
settings. For example, after I reinstall and then open Outlook, it knows
where my old outlook.pst file was -- which it shouldn't know if everything
was truly uninstalled.

BTW, the 2 Outlook problems are:
(1) The Outlook Today link no longer works. Either a completely blank screen
opens, or the message "Internet Explorer cannot open this web site." I have
tried the fixes suggested in MSKB article 305970 and they don't work.
(2) When I try to reply to an email, I get the message that "Microsoft Word
is set to be your email editor. However, Word is not available, not
installed, or not the same version as Outlook." This appears to be related
to whether the email is in Plain Text or HTML. If it's plain text and I try
to reply, Word opens normally. But if it's HTML, I get the above error
message.

TIA for any suggestions, either about how to fix the Outlook problems or how
to completely uninstall Office 2003.

Mike
 
"Mike Storms" said in news:[email protected]:
How can I COMPLETE uninstall Office 2003?

Two features in Outlook 2003 have quit working. I've tried
uninstalling and reinstalling Office, but it doesn't solve the
problems. BUT, it's clear that the uninstall routine is not removing
all the files and/or registry settings. For example, after I
reinstall and then open Outlook, it knows where my old outlook.pst
file was -- which it shouldn't know if everything was truly
uninstalled.

BTW, the 2 Outlook problems are:
(1) The Outlook Today link no longer works. Either a completely blank
screen opens, or the message "Internet Explorer cannot open this web
site." I have tried the fixes suggested in MSKB article 305970 and
they don't work. (2) When I try to reply to an email, I get the
message that "Microsoft Word is set to be your email editor. However,
Word is not available, not installed, or not the same version as
Outlook." This appears to be related to whether the email is in Plain
Text or HTML. If it's plain text and I try to reply, Word opens
normally. But if it's HTML, I get the above error message.

TIA for any suggestions, either about how to fix the Outlook problems
or how to completely uninstall Office 2003.

Mike
Click to expand...

Imagine how pissed you would be if after uninstalling Word you then found
every .doc file on your hard drives, every .doc file in your backups, every
..doc file that someone received from you, and every .doc file everywhere
that you ever created also got deleted as part of the Word uninstall. The
..pst file is output generated by YOU when you as you use the product. It is
YOUR *data* file.

Did you right-click on the root folder in your information store (i.e.,
"Outlook Today") and look under its Properties to see what web page was
specified as the home page to display for that folder? This folder is an
e-mail type folder. If you look at other e-mail type folders, like your
Inbox, you'll see the web page is blank so the default view gets used for
that e-mail type folder and you are looking at the "folder" within your .pst
file (which really isn't a folder but rather the hierarchy of how the data
is arranged within your .pst file, since after all the "folder" is within
the .pst file and not a folder in your hard drive's file allocation table).

For e-mail type folders, like Inbox or those you create, they won't specify
a Home Page in their Properties. For Outlook Today, the home page should be
(well, for me in Outlook 2002):

res://C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\Office10\1033\outlwvw.dll/outlook.htm

The "Office10" in the path is because I am using Outlook 2002. I suspect
for Outlook 2003 that it would be "Office11".

The version of Outlook you use for sending e-mails must match the version of
Word that you use to compose them. Obviously for plain text-only messages,
there's no special formatting of the message as there would be when using
HTML or RTF formats. If you are using Outlook 2003 then you MUST also use
Word 2003 if and only if you want to use Word to compose your e-mail
messages. If you have mixed the versions of Outlook and Word then you have
to use the embedded compose editor in Outlook.
 
Thanks for your reply. I have only installed Office 2003 on this computer,
so I don't see how I could have different versions of Outlook and Word. And
I had already checked that the default home page for Outlook Today is
res://C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\Office11\1033\outlwvw.dll/outlook.htm, per MSKB article 305970.

Any other ideas?

Mike
 
Thanks for your reply. I have only installed Office 2003 on this computer,
so I don't see how I could have different versions of Outlook and Word. And
I had already checked that the default home page for Outlook Today is
res://C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\Office11\1033\outlwvw.dll/outlook.htm, per MSKB article 305970.

Any other ideas?

Mike
 
"Mike Storms" said in news:%23PQ%[email protected]:
Thanks for your reply. I have only installed Office 2003 on this
computer, so I don't see how I could have different versions of
Outlook and Word. And I had already checked that the default home
page for Outlook Today is res://C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\Office11\1033\outlwvw.dll/outlook.htm, per MSKB article 305970.

Any other ideas?
Click to expand...

Try the following test. Instead of using the "res://..." URL for the home
page for Outlook Today, specify some other URL, like
http://www.microsoft.com and see if clicking on Outlook Today then opens
that web page okay (inside the rightside pane in Outlook). That will show
if Outlook can successfully use IE to render the web page within the pane
inside of Outlook. If you have a problem with that then I would try
reinstalling IE (the first install may only give you the option to refresh
components, so you'll want to do another install to get the option to
*replace* components).

I actually use the above trick to define e-mail type folders in Outlook for
my webmail accounts, so I have a "Yahoo Email" folder going to
https://login.yahoo.com/config/login?.src=ym&.intl=us, a "Hotmail"
email-type folder going to http://www.hotmail.com, and so on.

If you want to try going through the Office uninstall and reinstall route
again, try using Microsoft's cleaner after the uninstall:

Description of the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=290301

It doesn't remove files after uninstallation. It just cleans up the
registry. After running it, make sure the "C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office" directory doesn't exist anymore.
 
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