How to Uninstall Office 2007 – Steps to Remove

Many Microsoft Office 2007 users have complained about receiving the following error message when installing Office 2007 Professional Edition on their computer:

“Setup is unable to proceed due to the following error(s):

The 2007 Microsoft Office system does not support upgrading from a prerelease version of the 2007 Microsoft Office system. You must first uninstall any prerelease versions of the 2007 Microsoft Office system products and associated technologies.

Correct the issue(s) listed above and re-run setup.”

Cause of the Error

This error message is usually displayed when you already have some other version of Office 2007 on your computer. These versions include beta, prerelease and trial versions of the application suite.

Resolution Methods

The only way to eliminate this error and install Office 2007 Professional on your computer is to completely uninstall the other versions of Office 2007 from your computer.

This is usually not possible by using only the Add or Remove Programs tool that comes with Windows. You will also have to get rid of Office 2007 uninstaller files, folder and registry entries to ensure complete removal. The following is a step-by-step procedure to perform this task:

  1. Start by uninstalling any components of previous installations of Office 2007 from your computer. Here are the steps:
    1. Start Add or Remove Programs from Control Panel or by running the appwiz.cpl command.
    2. Here, search for Office 2007 components or programs in the Currently installed programs list, and get rid of them one by one.
  2. Next, delete Office 2007 uninstaller files.
    1. Select Run from the Start menu, type installer and then press Enter. (This will open the Installer folder.)
      Note: You will need to change the view of the Installer folder to be able to identify Office 2007 .msi files.
    2. Change the view of the Installer folder to Detail view.
    3. On the View menu, select Choose Details.
    4. Now select the Subject check box and change its width to 340 pixels.
    5. Click OK to save your settings.
    6. In the Installer window, look in the Subject column to identify the .msi files for Office 2007. Leave the folder open.
    7. Next, open Start and select Run.
    8. In the Open box, type msiexec.exe /x command.
    9. Drag an Office 2007 .msi file from the Installer folder and drop it beside the msiexec.exe /x command in the Open box.
    10. At the end of this command, type NOREMOVESPAWN=1, and press Enter.
      Note: This step will uninstall the selected Office 2007 .msi file. Repeat the steps to uninstall all Office 2007 .msi files you find in the Installer folder.
  3. Now we need to stop the Office Source Engine.
    1. Select Run from the Start menu, type Services.msc and then press Enter.
    2. Here, search for and right-click Office Source Engine.
    3. Select Stop.
    4. Exit the Services management console window.
  4. Remove Office 2007 remnants.
    1. Open Microsoft Shared folder by running the %CommonProgramFiles%\Microsoft Shared command.
    2. If you find Office 12 and Source Engine folders here, delete them.
    3. Next open the Microsoft Office folder by running the %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office command and then delete the Office12 folder.
    4. Next, open the MSOCacher folder located at the root of each hard drive volume and delete all folders with office in their name.
    5. Next, delete the Normal.dotm and Normalemail.dotm files from the folder that opens by running the %appdata%\microsoft\document building blocks\language_id command.
    6. Next, open the Templates folder by running the %appdata%\microsoft\templates command.
    7. Here, delete the Building blocks.dotx file.
    8. Next, open the %temp% and delete all temporary files in this folder.
    9. Finally, run the %AllUsersprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\Data command and delete the Opa12.dat file located within it.
      Warning: Make sure that you do not delete the Opa12.bak file.
    10. Reboot your system.
  5. Get rid of Office 2007 registry entries.
    1. Select Run from the Start menu, type regedit and then press Enter.The Registry Editor window will be displayed.
    2. Navigate to the following registry entries one-by-one and delete them.Warning: The following steps require you to delete Office 2007 entries from the registry. It is recommended that you make a registry backup before proceeding with these steps. This will ensure that you can recover from any mistakes by restoring the registry from the backup taken earlier. You can either use File > Export command in Windows Registry Editor or use a reliable registry tool, such as RegGenie to make the backup.
      • HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Office \ 12.0
      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Office \ 12.0
      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Office \ Delivery \ SourceEngine \ Downloads \ *0FF1CE}-*
      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentV ersion \ Uninstall \ *0FF1CE*
      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentV ersion \ Installer \ UpgradeCodes \ *F01FECHKEY_LOCAL_MACHIN E \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Installer \ UserData \ S-1-5-18 \ Products \ *F01FEC
      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Services \ o se
      • HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \ Installer \ Features \ *F01FEC
      • HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \ Installer \ Products \ *F01FEC
      • HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \ Installer \ UpgradeCodes \ *F01FEC
      • HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \ Installer \ Win32Assemblies \ *Office12*
    3. Now navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentV ersion\Uninstall.
    4. Here, delete all keys with ValueName Uninstallstring and value as *\Office Setup Controller\setup.exe*

After you have successfully completed the above steps, restart your system and proceed with the installation of original Office 2007 on your PC.

If you find the manual removal process of pre-release versions Microsoft Office 2007 a tedious process, it is best that you use a reliable program uninstaller tool, such as Perfect Uninstaller to perform the task. This tool thoroughly scans the entire hard disk and registry for files related to the program you are trying to remove and gets rid of them to ensure complete removal.