RECOVERY AND BACKUP

INSTALLATION

Stop Word from Demanding the Installation CD

The Annoyance:

Word keeps demanding the installation CD so that it can install missing components .

The Fix:

By the time you find Word doing this, the horse has already bolted, and it's hard to close the stable door. If you're reading this Annoyance while mulling over whether to install all of Word (or Office) or just those parts of it that you immediately need, mull no longer: unless your computer is critically short of hard disk space, install all the components.

If the version of Word (or Office) you're installing gives you the choice, leave the installation cache on the computer rather than deleting it. That way, Word (or Office) will have the necessary files to either repair itself if components get corrupted or install additional features (if there are any you haven't installed).

Install Multiple Versions of Word on the Same PC

The Annoyance:

I need to run two or more versions of Word on the same PC so that I can troubleshoot my clients ' Word problems. However, Word just wants to overwrite earlier versions of itself.

The Fix:

Word and the other Office applications usually overwrite previous installations of Office on the general principle that you couldn't possibly want them not to. If you're upgrading to a new version of Office, this behavior makes sense, as it prevents you from leaving the old version of Office hanging around. But it's not good news if you want to be able to test your files with the new version of Office before you commit to it.

When you run Office 2003 Setup, the Type of Installation screen (see Figure 1-1) offers you the choice between the Recommended Install (an upgrade) and another type of install. Office XP Setup provides similar choices with different wording and arrangement. The screens list different applications for the different editions of OfficeProfessional, Professional Enterprise, Small Business, or Standardbut the principles are the same.

USE VIRTUAL MACHINES FOR DEVELOPMENT OR SUPPORT

If you provide support for Word (or other applications) to clients, or if you develop software, consider using virtual machines for your testing and development. A virtual-machine application lets you run a software-based PC within Windows or another operating system. Any changes you make and any crashes that occur are confined to the virtual machine, rather than affecting your productivity applications.

The most widely used virtual-machine applications for Windows are Microsoft's Virtual PC (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx) and VMware's VMware Workstation (http://www.vmware.com/products/desktop/ws_features.html). You can download a time-limited evaluation version of each application.

Figure 1-1. Don't allow Office 2003 Setup to press-gang you into upgrading if you actually want to perform a parallel installation.

PROBLEMS RUNNING TWO OR MORE VERSIONS OF WORD ON THE SAME PC

Once you've installed two or three versions of Word on the same PC, you'll soon see why Microsoft doesn't recommend that you do so.

Only one version of Word can be associated with any given file type at a time. If no other version of Word is running, either the associated version or the last version you ran will open when you double-click a document of that file type. If another version of Word is running, the document opens in the running version rather than in the associated version. Usually, the last version you installed grabs the association. To change the association manually, open a Windows Explorer window (e.g., by choosing Start My Computer), choose Tools Folder Options, and work on the File Types tab.

Each time you start a version of Word other than the last version you ran, you'll see the Windows Installer dialog box configuring Word. Let the Windows Installer proceedit's generally harmless and will usually finish in a few seconds. However, sometimes you may run into problems, such as a font registration error (see Figure 1-2). Click the Retry button to retry the registration. If that fails, click the Ignore button. If Word won't run correctly after the Installer finishes, choose Start Control Panel Add or Remove Programs, click the appropriate version of Office, click the Change button, and follow the procedure for repairing Office. If you didnt keep the installation cache on your computer, you may need to supply the Office CD.

Figure 1-2. Running multiple versions of Word on the same installation of Windows may result in errors.

Choose the appropriate type of installfor example, a Complete Install. On the Previous Version of Office screen or the Remove Previous Versions of Office Applications screen, select the "Remove only the following applications" option and uncheck the boxes for applications you want to keep. Outlook 2003 refuses to share a PC with earlier versions of Outlook, so you'll need to sacrifice Outlook 2000 or Outlook XP.

Keep Shortcuts for Both Word 2000 and Word XP on the Same Computer

The Annoyance:

I've installed Word 2000 and Word XP on the same computer, but there's only one set of shortcuts on the Start menu.

The Fix:

When you install Office XP on a computer that already has Office 2000 installed, Office XP tends to grab the Office 2000 shortcuts on the Start menu. You need to re-create the shortcuts for the Office 2000 applications you choose to keep. Here's the easiest way to re-create them:

---

Tip: Office 2003 puts its Start menu shortcuts in a Microsoft Office folder rather than directly on the All Programs menu, so it doesn't overwrite the Office XP or Office 2000 shortcuts.

---

1. Choose Start Run, type %programfiles% in the Run box, and press Enter or click the OK button. ( %programfiles% is an environment variable that contains the path to your Program Files folder.)

2. If the Program Files window shows a blue background with the message "These Files Are Hidden," click the "Show the contents of this folder" link.

3. Open the folder containing Office. Usually, this is called Microsoft Office , but it will have a different name if you or whoever installed Office customized the installation.

4. Open the folder containing Office 2000. The default name for this folder is Office .

5. Right-click each Office 2000 application (for example, WINWORD.EXE ) and choose Send to Desktop (Create Shortcut) to create a shortcut on the Desktop.

Install Word on Both OSes in a Dual-Boot Configuration

The Annoyance:

My PC dual-boots Windows XP and Windows 2000 Professional. I want to use the same copy of Word from each OS, rather than installing it twice.

The Fix:

You can do this, but there are a few restrictions. First, each OS should be installed on a separate partition. If the OSes share a partition, you may find that Windows exhibits what Microsoft terms "irregular" behavior. Second, the partitions must normally use the same formateither NTFS (which is best) or FAT32. If one partition is NTFS and the other is FAT32, you'll probably need to install Office separately on each partition.

WHAT'S A PARTITION?

A partition is a logical division of a physical drive. You typically decide the partition structure of a drive when installing an operating system, but if you're running Windows XP or Windows 2000, you can also create new partitions (or delete existing partitions) by using the Disk Management tool. (To run Disk Management, choose Start Run, type diskmgmt.msc , and press Enter.)

Disk Management can't resize existing partitions without deleting them first. To resize an existing partition, use either a third-party tool, such as Symantec's PartitionMagic (http://www. symantec .com) or V Communications' Partition Commander (http://www.v-com.com), or an alternative solution such as the Knoppix distribution of Linux, which comes on a bootable CD. (See Kyle Rankin's Knoppix Hacks , also published by O'Reilly, for details on partitioning with Knoppix.)

Install All Necessary Graphics Filters

The Annoyance:

JPEG must be the most widely used picture format on the planet, given that almost every digital camera produces JPEGs of one sort or other. But Word won't let me put a single JPEG in my documents. It doesn't even seem to like GIFs. Every other word processor I've used can handle GIFs and JPEGs! Did I just get out of the wrong side of the bed this morning?

The Fix:

It sounds like the graphics filters you need aren't installed or are corrupted. Choose Start Control Panel Add or Remove Programs, click the Office item, and click the Change button. In the Office Setup Wizard, choose the Add or Remove Features option. In Office 2003, check the "Choose advanced customization of applications box. Expand the Office Shared Features category and the Converters and Filters category underneath it. Click the Graphics Filters item and choose "Run all from My Computer" from the drop-down menu. (Alternatively, expand the Graphics Filters category and choose the individual graphics filters you need.)

Make the Most of the Word Product-Activation Grace Period

The Annoyance:

Every time I start Word, up pops the Activation Wizard, bugging me to activate Office. I don't want to activate it until I know whether I'm going to upgrade my computer or get a new one.

The Fix:

There's no fix for this one. If you want to use Word (or Office) beyond the trial period on a PC, you must activate it. Activation is intended to cut down on piracy by preventing you from installing Office on more than one computer at a time. (You can move Word from one PC to another and then reactivate it, which is useful when you get a new PC.)

You may disagree with the principle of having to activate software you've bought, but Office 2003's and Office XP's activation grace period is pretty generous; it lets you launch the Office programs up to 50 times altogether before forcing you to activate them. If you scrupulously avoid closing the programs, you can stretch those 50 uses to several months. Every now and then, one of the programs will crash or hang; that'll cost you a restart, as will the times when you have to restart Windows XP or Windows 2000.

Here are two more things you might want to know about activation:

• You can't reset the pre-activation counter by reinstalling Office on the same computer. But if you use a different PC, or a different virtual machine, it works.

• If product activation fails with a connection error, check that HTTP port 80 and HTTPS port 443 are open on your firewall. The easiest way to check is to open a browser and try to access http://www.microsoft.com:80 and https ://www.microsoft.com:443, one after the other. If either connection fails, your firewall is blocking that port and needs to be configured to allow traffic to pass. If you don't administer your firewall, consult the administrator.

---

Tip: If you set up your PC to dual-boot different versions of Windows, you can install the same copy of Office on each version of Windows without product- activation problems occurring.

---

Install Word for Only One User

The Annoyance:

I'm the only user of my computer who needs to use Word, but the Office installation routine has set up each of the applications for all the users of the computer. How can I prevent the other users from using Word?

The Fix:

What you're asking for here is the kind of thing that administrators of Windows-based networks can do easily by using group policies. But I'm guessing that you're asking about a standalone installation, in which case there's no option to install Word (or, more generally, Office) for only one or some of the machine's users. Instead, the installation routine automatically makes Word (or Office) available to all users.

The best fix for this problem is to get another computer for the other users. The next best fix is to set up your computer as a dual-boot machine: one operating system with Office (or Word) for you, the other operating system without it.

If neither of these simple fixes appeals to you, follow this involved series of steps to approximate the effect you want. You'll need a copy of Tweak UI (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx), as well as access to the other user accounts on your PC:

1. If you haven't already applied a password to your user account and made it private, do so. Choose Start Run, type control userpasswords , and press Enter to open the User Accounts window. Click your account, click Create a Password, type the password twice, and click the Create Password button. When Windows XP asks if you want to make your files and folders private, click the Yes, Make Private button.

2. Still in your user account, open a Windows Explorer window to the Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs folderthe folder that contains items that appear on each user's Start menu. Choose Start Run, type %userprofile%\Start Menu\Programs , and press Enter to open another Windows Explorer window to your own Programs folder. Drag the Microsoft Office folder from the all-users' Programs folder to your Programs folder. Go up one level in each window to the Start Menu folder, and drag the New Office Document shortcut and the Open Office Document shortcut from the all-users' folder to your folder. This removes the Office- related items from the Start menu.

3. Log on to the first of the other user accounts and do the following:

   1. Run Tweak UI and use the Templates feature (see Figure 1-3) to delete all the Office-related items from the New submenu on the context menu for a Windows Explorer window (or the Desktop).

      Figure 1-3. Use Tweak UI to remove Office items from the New submenu of the Windows Explorer shortcut menu to prevent other users from running Word.

      
      

   2. Choose Start My Computer to open a Windows Explorer window; then choose Tools Folder Options and click the File Types tab. Click the File Types column heading to sort the Registered File Types list alphabetically . Scroll down to the items starting with "Microsoft Office (for Office 2003) or "Microsoft" (for Office XP or Office 2000). Delete all the Office-related items that you can dispense with, and change those you must keep so that they are associated with other applications. For example, you might associate the .doc extension with WordPad or another word processor. Scan down the list for Office icons in the Extensions columnfor example, "Outlook" items are listed separately, and the Rich Text Format file type is usually associated with Wordand delete or change them as necessary.

4. Repeat Step 4 for each of the other user accounts that you want to restrict.

   ---

   Warning: If a user starts one of the Office applications, the Windows Installer installs that application and its helper applications in the Program Files folder and creates a Start menu item for that application if there isn't one already.

   ---