Earlier this week, Microsoft Office stopped working on my computer. The same thing happened whether I was using Office XP or Office 2003, and it was maddening. While I might put on bravado and claim that I don’t like MS products, that’s pretty much a lie. I pay $10 each, every month for my wife and I to have Exchange accounts. If I’m paying for Exchange, I want Outlook to work too.
The error indicated that “Word [Outlook, Excel, etc] is not installed for the current user.” So, I did some searching and found a whole litany of reasons why this might be. After spending an entire week installing and uninstalling office multiple times daily I had decided that most of the “fixes” were simply superstitious coincidences. Every time I saw a post indicating a fix, I wanted to scream “LIAR”!
My user account is an administrator account, so permissions seemed an unlikely culprit. Oddly enough, though, the machine Administrator account could run Office. Strange. So, I created a test user with limited authority. That user could also start Office. Harumph. My logical conclusion was that my user profile must be corrupt, so I reset my profile. Still no dice.
The final step was to completely delete my user account and create a new account with the same name. And (drumroll please….) it worked! After reclaiming permissions on my original profile, I got my settings back too.
This begs the question “What’s up with that?” What prompts a problem with someone’s security account? Should I expect more shenanigans? Perhaps. In the meantime, I’m simply happy to have Outlook open and synchronizing in the background.
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