Windows 10: uninstall office 03 after upgrading to 10

ok, got a buddy in the uk who upgraded to 10, now he wants to remove microsoft office 03 as its barely compatible with 10 and he wants to grab a more recent version of office. small problem. he cant figure out how to uninstall it. the usual suspects for enabling an uninstall dont appear to show the program. I've directed him to tutorial Apps - Uninstall in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums and suggested option 4. he's currently told me both hdd's and the ssd all have a folder called microsoft office. he's unsure whats what.

edit:
for clarification, the SSD is the drive that has the operating system installed to it.
one hdd holds installed games, the other gets everything else.

:)

 

File explorer preview will not display .xlsx files

There were 14 updates installed on 10/03/2016 and a further 39 on 14/03/2016.

All of them were for MS Office 2007.

Most of them do not specify which component of Office they were updating.

There have been a further 6 updates, mostly for Windows, from 10/03/2016 to 22/03/2016

So I don't think uninstalling them one-at-a-time is a viable solution, particularly as others have the same or similar problem.

Later

It appears that the problem is more localized. Browsing a number of files I noticed that xls and xlsx files DO have a preview, it's only xlsm ones that don't.

 

Outlook email links not working with Win 10 and IE11.

I have found with office packages and windows 10 is best to uninstall the office completely and then re-installed.

It seems strange but when I first upgraded to Windows 10 my purchased office 2013 was not recognized. So I tried uninstalling it from programs but that left bits and pieces behind so I had use a uninstall tool Microsoft has to completely remove all of 2013
office. After that I re-installed it and it worked perfectly

 

Does he have multiple versions of Office installed currently? The one from 2003, sure. But also other ones?
Does he have the Office compatibility pack for opening new office file types installed?

It will help to have a look at what is inside these "Microsoft Office" folders. There will be folders called something like "Office10", "Office12" and so on. Which of those are there?

 

well, as he's now in bed, I'll ask him when I myself get out of bed.

 

The 2003 version of Office internally is called "Office11" btw, if that is what you are looking for...

 

he only has office 03(11) installed.

 

Here is a list with the things I personally would look for:

• I do not know, why for him, program files are stored on different disks, but if Office11 is all he has installed, then he should just remove these folders.
• Also should you check the Program Files/Common Files folder; it might also contain files of the old Office version, which should be removed as well.
• The User folder will contain Office related files at several places inside the AppData folder. These folders (called Microsoft Office I guess), should also be removed.
• It might make sense to clean up the registry afterwards as well, e.g. he will still have file association entries pointing to the then removed applications. A cleaning tool like CCleaner might help to identify and remove registry entries, which are corrupted afterwards.
• There will also still be an entry in the "installed programes" list in the control panel.
• And maybe way more stuff.

Anyway, if you install the new version of Office after you have done the above steps, things should be fine.

 

A little off topic, but I have Office 2003 running on 2 W10 computers and have not had a problem yet. One computer was an 8.1 to 10 upgrade (with Office 2003 already loaded) , and the second computer was brand new that came with W10. I had to remove the new temporary "try it" version first, then loaded 2003 from my original discs. I know that I should move up to the latest Office, but the old version works fine for what I use it for.

 

Have him try to reinstall it. I've done that with a few problem programs and it helped most of the time.

 

I have not yet tried it, but I have also seen a Windows 10 installation with Office 2003 in it. I think it would not have been there, if it did not work...

Anyway, continuing to use Office 2003 actually is no good idea: Extended support for Office 2003 has ended in April 2014; since that date security vulnerabilities no longer get fixed.

 

Well, your comment made me get up and check the Microsoft box again and it is Office 2007 not 2003 as I previously posted. Sorry for my screw up.

 

Office 2007 is working fine for me as well. For Office 2003 see above.

Anything to add to my list in post #6?

 

No, I have nothing to add since I have not had any problems with W10 with exception of not being able to setup my Home Group, which worked fine with W7 & W8.1. Not worried about that since I have not really used it much anyway.

 

added additional details to first post.