When you buy a new branded computer or laptop from HP, Dell, Compaq, Acer, chances is the manufacturer has already helped you to install Microsoft Office 2007 trial version valid for 60 days. After 60 days trial period, you have to either buy the full license or you can’t continue using it. One of my customer who uses his laptop in his work place wanted to remove the preinstalled Microsoft Office 2007 that has expired but he wasn’t able to. I tried to uninstall from Programs and Features but got the error “Setup error – The language of this installation package is not supported by your system.” I’ve also tried running Microsoft Office diagnostics and nothing happens.
Microsoft has provided an article on how to uninstall the 2007 Office system if you cannot uninstall it by using the “Add or Remove Programs” feature. The steps is very long and involves searching and deleting a lot files including registry keys. Fortunately I found a small tool called Remove Office 2007 that is able to strip out Microsoft Office 2007 when the standard uninstall process wont work.
Remove Office 2007 is only 128KB in size and is able to remove only only Office 2007. I’ve ran this tool on my customer’s computer and it was able to uninstall the pre-installed Microsoft Office 2007. All you need to do is to click the OK button and it will do the rest.
Do take note that this tool automatically restarts the computer when it has finished deleting all the services, files and registry that belongs to Office 2007. After reboot, your operating system will try to look for the Office MSI installer again. Canceling the setup will take care of it.
Remove Office 2007 doesn’t have a close button where you can close the program if you don’t want to uninstall office. You’ll have to launch Windows Task Manager (right clicking the Taskbar and select Task Manager), and kill the RipOutOffice2007.exe process. A useful tool that is going in to my USB flash drive which I bring along with me when I service computers.