For sucking six hours of productivity out of my life.<\/p>\n
It turns out that if you install a smaller MS Office package over a larger one, using the default settings, the extra bits of your old installation get zapped.<\/p>\n
Oh, without a by-your-leave. They just disappear.<\/p>\n
Bye-bye Outlook!<\/p>\n
Fortunately the *.pst file was left behind, so I figured I could reinstall.<\/p>\n
Uh, no. Well I could, but Outlook would open up and then apologetically fail, offering the opportunity to send a message to Mr Microsoft. Okay, well maybe I ought to move up to the current Outlook then? That installed, but then failed in an identical way on startup. I tried uninstalling Outlook and reinstalling. The behaviour was the same. I couldn’t even get the thing to open up as a fresh installation.<\/p>\n
Reluctantly, I thought, I’d go over to Outlook Express 6. It imported all my messages, but not my contacts. I had to import them using Windows Address Book, which made them available to that. Then I set up my account information. Email receiving worked fine, but email sending … unable to contact server.<\/p>\n
I went to do other stuff for a couple of hours. Then I came back and uninstalled every bit of both versions of Office. Rebooted. Installed an even older version of Outlook that I new would act as a totally new installation. I set it up properly, imported all my emails and contacts, and made sure it worked in all respects. Then I installed the Office that was there this morning over the top of that, so I’m back where I was before I started this whole thing.<\/p>\n
And that’s where I’m leaving it.<\/p>\n
But, seriously, is it good software design to have it delete applications which are not part of it without any warning whatsoever? This is Office 2010 we’re talking about, not some fly-by-night primitive piece of software!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For sucking six hours of productivity out of my life. It turns out that if you install a smaller MS Office package over a larger one, using the default settings, the extra bits of your old installation get zapped. Oh, … Continue reading