RND(tech)

Microsoft recently release Office 2008 for Mac and since the original release, several updates have come out. They can be found here:

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.mspx

Office 2008 SP1 is 12.1.0, but updates 12.1.1 and 12.1.2 are also available now. Each of these three updates has given me problems from the actual installer, straight through to actually opening some applications. The most famous of which is that Word won't start and it keeps bouncing back to the "user experience" wizard and then straight Microsoft AutoUpdate checks. Ironic.

First off, if you've used a program like Monolingual to remove the PowerPC binaries, stop right here, remove your Office 2008 folder from Applications and reinstall. Also, make sure you're installing to the default /Applications folder. Don't rename the folder, don't try and modify the installation.

Next, have your CD key ready (you'll need it at the end):

- Reboot the computer

- find any pre-Office 2008 Normal templates. These are just called "Normal" and have no file extension.

- find the 2008 Normal template and delete it. It should be in your user folder under
~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates/

- Remove the following folders and files
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Word Settings (10)
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Word Settings (11)
~/Library/Preferences/com.Microsoft.Word.plist
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2008

- Reboot and attempt the 12.1.0 (SP1) Update

- Reboot and attempt the 12.1.1 Update

- Reboot and attempt the 12.1.2 Update

- Reboot and start Word. Office should now ask for your CD key and user information.

I HAD to reboot in between updates. If I didn't, the installer for each update said it couldn't find the existing software to update. I'm not sure what happens on reboots, but I'm almost sure it has to do with caches in OS X. Also, I downloaded each of the installers from the Microsoft website. I didn't use the AutoUpdate. I'm sure it'll work just fine now that I've cleared all of my preferences, but we'll see.

I can't believe that at this point Microsoft doesn't have the WPA2 support for Windows XP in the automatic updates. Apparently, they decided this needs to be downloaded separately. Woe is the person who actually needs to set one up on their primary wireless access point. Even with the release of Service Pack 3, this still is not included, even as a rolled in package.

Download it from here if you need it, or scale back to WPA if you want to have decent support for random visitors to your wireless network:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917021

Sadly, I just found out Microsoft no longer includes HyperTerminal in Windows Vista. Actually, the never did, but it was part of Windows since many old years ago. Anyone who's anybody and configures switches, routers, etc, needs a serial port terminal. Unfortunately, serial ports are dying off on most computers. This isn't any late breaking news, especially not for Vista users.

Anyway, go get PuTTY. It's free and does serial terminal emulation, as well as SSH and TELNET. Oh yeah, the default Vista install doesn't include TELNET anymore, but if you need it, it's part of the additional components.