Steps for a successful update

This page will go over the steps to update Office after you have installed from DVD and applied any update.

Before updating Office, I suggest archiving (zipping) your Office folder or making a duplicate if you do not have a Time Machine backup of Office for Mac in Applications. There is no way to easily revert to a previous version after updating. for more info see Revert to a previous version after a bad update and Warning about updating while away from home

1. Microsoft Office must be installed in the boot volume in an Admin account.
2. Launch the Microsoft Autoupdater (MAU).
   1. To launch MAU, you can open any Office application and select "Check for Updates" under Help in the Menu bar.
   2. Once MAU is launched, select "Keep in Dock"
3. Quit all Microsoft applications (Easy way: log out. When you log in, hold down the Shift key. This will disable all startup items including the hidden ones. It's important all Microsoft applications are quit, but quitting all applications will result in fewer problems overall. Any open application could be corrupted by the process.
4. Select the MAU from the Dock. Download updater suggested and install. (see requirements in Notes below)
5. Restart between each update. (sometimes the temp folder where the update wants to write to is locked, restarting your machine clears the temp folder and rectifies this problem)
6. You can remove the MAU from Dock after you complete the update.

VERIFY FREE SPACE

To check how much free space is available on your startup disk:

Use Activity Monitor located in Applications/Utilities. Select the Disk Usage tab. Compare the Space Free to the Total size. More info

SAFE BOOT MODE

Hold down the Shift key when booting your computer. You can let go of the Shift key when you see Safe Boot and a progress bar. When booting into safe boot mode it forces your computer to run various maintenance tasks. More info

UPDATE BASE SYSTEM FILES

Download and run the latest combo. Running the combo updater overwrites potentially problem-causing files. Combo updaters will install on the same version as they're applying--no need to roll back or do a clean install. The Combo updates contain all incremental updates and will update files that could have become corrupted.

Download links

REPAIR DISK PERMISSIONS:

After installing Office, open Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities), select your hard disk volume in the left pane, click the First Aid tab, then click Repair Disk Permissions.

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Notes:

Office 2011:

1. 14.1.0 SP1 was released in April 2011. It's important to update for improvements. Previous updaters 14.0.1 and 14.0.2 were combined into SP1 updater.
2. Set Microsoft AutoUpdater to check for updates to "Automatically" so you won't miss future updaters.
3. There have been two database upgrades to Outlook. Until you fully update you will not be able to open your Outlook Identity.
4. It's important to quit Safari and all other browsers before updating. Best option is to use the log out/in with shift key as described above. Outlook uses Safari's WebKit to render windows.
   1. Outlook 2011 will not reply or create new emails
      Fix: Reinstall Safari. http://www.apple.com/safari/download/

Office 2008:

1. If you have the original DVD, you will need 12.1.0 SP1 and 12.3.1 updaters.
2. Newer DVDs came with 12.1.0 SP1 or 12.2.0 SP2. Use Microsoft Autoupdater to check for most recent updater.
3. If you have already updated to Entourage EWS, the updater will auto update Entourage.
4. If you have never installed EWS, to install EWS v13, Update to latest version then download the Microsoft Entourage 2008 for Mac, Web Services Edition installer v13.x.x from Mactopia. For example if you updated to 12.3.0 you'll need the 13.1.0 EWS updater.

Note: only upgrade to EWS for Exchange 2007 or higher capability.