I have a new laptop with Vista. It included a trial version of MS Office 2007. I want to remove this so I can install my Office 2003. Problem is that the 2007 does not appear in Control Panel Programs & Features - How do I remove it? Any advice welcomed!
Vista does support Microsoft Office 2003, so once you’ve uninstalled Office 2007, you should have no trouble using it. That said, it is definitely a good idea to uninstall the trial version before you install Office 2003 - there are lots of sob stories on the web about people who have trouble trying to install 2003 over the Office 2007 trial.
Look for Uninstaller
You say that it does not appear in Programs and Features - I want you to try one more thing before we get down to the nitty gritty. Go to Start. In the Search Box type: uninstall. Look through the list of uninstall programs to see if you can find an “uninstall Microsoft Office 2007″ uninstaller in the list. If so, double-click and follow the prompts.
Check Programs and Features
If not, let’s try Programs and Features once again, just in case. Once again, use the Search box as a handy shortcut. This time, type: programs and features. Click on the icon for Programs and Features. Let the system load this screen completely. It sometimes takes a while for all programs to populate this list. In addition, make sure that you haven’t previously “filtered” the results. For example, if you click on the right portion of any category such as Name, Publisher, Installed On, or Size, a submenu appears allowing you to filter or sort the results. If you have the list filtered, then you could be inadvertently hiding the Office trial version.
Uninstall Office Steps
Do you see anything with Office 2007 in the subject? If so, then click Uninstall/Change. If you don’t see anything with Microsoft Office 2007, then you need to get into the registry and do some adjustments there. While this is not a difficult process, it is rather long and complicated with registry changes that you have to make exactly. Click on the link to Microsoft support for uninstalling Office 2007 in registry, as the steps are too intricate to list here.
This process requires that you log in to the system as an administrator - if this is your personal computer you will likely be set up as the administrator. This is a multistep process where you will remove any Windows Installer Packages, stop the Office Source Engine, remove the Installation folders and files and then remove the registry subkeys.
As always, if you are going in to edit the registry, make sure you know what you’re doing. Any changes that you make to the registry can affect the whole system. Also make sure that you have your data backed up before you try to work through this process. After you’ve completed the uninstall, you should be able to restart your computer and then install your version of Microsoft Office 2003. If you get an error message while you are trying to install Office 2003, temporarily disable your spyware and malware programs while you are installing and you should be able to install it with no more problems.
Kat Delong | January 12th, 2009
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