Some Sage Advice

Ever since I ran a registry cleaner on my Windows XP machine, I have been unable to run automatic updates on any of my MS Office 2003 products. I couldn’t load Service Pack 3 nor the Outlook Junk Mail Filter Updates.

My Event Viewer log files showed MsiInstaller errors such as:

“Product: Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 - Update ‘Update for Outlook 2003: Junk E-mail Filter (KB958620): OUTLFLTR’ could not be installed. Error code 1603. Additional information is available in the log file.”

What I learned was that I had previously run a registry cleaner which wiped out certain registry entries for some of the Office installer files paths.

Here is the fix:

Note: Before you proceed, backup the registry by going into regedit and choosing Export. And as an extra precaution, set a System Restore Point as well. You have been warned!

Rename Office subkeys

Note: Removing the following registry keys may reset customized user
settings for your Microsoft Office programs.

1. Close all the applications.
2. Click on Start->Run, type in REGEDIT and click on OK.
3. Locate and select the following registry subkeys:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0

4. Right click on 11.0 and rename them to Old11.
5. Close the Registry Editor.

Detect and Repair Office 2003

1. On the Windows taskbar, click Start, point to and click Control Panel.
2. Double-click Add/Remove Programs.
3. Highlight Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003.
4. Click Change.
5. Select “Reinstall and Repair” and click Next.
6. Select “Detect and Repair errors in my Office installation”.
7. Insert the correct version of CD if it requires it.
8. Wait the process to end.

Now, Install your updates.

Make sure you have your original CD on hand as you may need it and you will also need to re-enter your seral number since you are editing the registry. So have the product ID card handy. When you restart and launch any of your Office programs, you will be required to re-enter the serial number.

If you get the error “error in registry for exchange extensions” when starting Outlook 2003, there is an easy fix. Just edit the registry entry below.

Note The Exchange Extensions string value in the registry may become corrupted again and you may have to repeat these steps.

1. Quit Outlook 2003.
2. Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
3. Expand the registry, and then click to select the following subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Extensions
4. Right-click Exchange Extensions, and then click Delete.
5. Click Yes to confirm the deletion of the Exchange Extensions string value.
6. On the File menu, click Exit to quit Registry Editor.

Yes, I do use Windows on occassion and there has been an annoying little problem I have been experiencing with Microsoft Word 2003. Seemed like everytime I changed the default font from Times New Roman to Verdana, it would always revert back. Then I found that there is an incompatability with Word 2003 and Acrobat 7 that prevents Word from saving its preferences!

You might want to change certain default settings in Word, such as the default page margins or font, or your might want to edit toolbar settings or create keyboard shortcuts, AutoText entries, macros, etc. All these settings are saved in the Normal.dot file, which is the file used to create all new documents in Word.

There is a conflict between MS Word 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 7.0 which prevents any changes to the Normal.dot file from being permanently saved.

There are two fixes for this problem:

1. Manually saving the normal.dot file anytime you make a global change to the template (directions below).

2. Disabling the Adobe toolbar add-in (way below are directions)

1. Manually saving changes to the Normal.dot file

Anytime you change one of Word’s default settings (margins, fonts, AutoCorrect/AutoText entries, macros, toolbar settings, etc), these changes are stored in the Normal.dot template so that the next time you create a blank document, the changes are there.

To manually save these changes:

• Make the necessary changes:

  If you are changing your default margins (File, Page Setup) or your default Font (Format, Font), be sure to click the Default button at the bottom of the window.

  If you are creating macros, keyboard shortcuts or AutoCorrect/ AutoText Entries, do them as you normally do.

• Save the document you are working in and give it a generic name (document 1) or name it whatever you want to call it. This file is not needed for your changes to stick, so you can delete it later if you want to.

• Now click and hold the Shift key on your keyboard and click File from the menu above (where it says File, Edit, View, etc.).

• You will see Save All on the File menu. Click Save All.

• Close completely out of Word and then go back in to make sure your changes are there.

You must use Shift-File-Save All EVERYTIME you make changes to the default settings in Word. One way to make this process a little easier is to add the Save All command to your Standard toolbar. To do this:

• Open Word.

• Click Tools and select Customize.

• Click the Commands tab.

• Locate the existing Print icon on the Standard toolbar and drag it off of the toolbar.

• On the Commands tab, locate the Categories on the left and select File.

• On the right, scroll down the list until you find Save All.

• Drag that Save All command from the list up to your toolbar and drop it next to the existing Save icon (or wherever you want it to be).

• You can continue to add and remove commands from/to your toolbar/

• Click OK when done.

• The new Save All icon will look like three diskettes on top of each other.

• Now click your new Save All icon to save your changes to the Normal template.

• If prompted to save the document you are in, save it and give it a name. You can always go back later and delete that document if you don’t need it.

2. Removing the Adobe Toolbar Add-In

1. Close Word.
2. Click Start and select Run.
3.  Type regedit and click OK.
4. Locate [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins\PDFMaker.OfficeAddin]
5. On the right, double-click on LoadBehavior.
6. Change the value of 3 to a 0.
7. Close the Registry Editor (no need to save changes).
8. Now when you open Word, you will notice that the Adobe toolbar and menu have disappeared.
9. To create PDF files now, the user must click File, Print, and select Adobe PDF from the printers list.

IMPORTANT NOTE

If you (or the end-user) attempts to create a PDF file from within Adobe (by opening Adobe 7.0 Pro and selecting Create Adobe PDF), Adobe will notice that the plug-in in Word is missing, repair the problem, restart the computer, and change this registry setting back to 3, which then adds the Adobe toolbar add-in back into Word. Therefore, users need to be made aware of this.

If Quark 7 won’t launch on your Mac and you get an error stating the the Color Manager.qrc extension is damaged or missing, there is a fix that is working for many users. It seems like some of the color management frameworks get damaged and need to be re-installed.

This has been suggested by a Quark Tech Support person. It did work for many users.

1. Go to > Macintosh HD > Library > Frameworks >

and trash  Logosync.framework, Xlan Frameworks, Kodak.CMS  (both the files and folders in there).

2. Go to > Macintosh HD > Applications > QuarkXPress folder > For System > QuarkXPress Components > double click to launch and give the location of QuarkXPress folder to install it.

3. Now launch QuarkXPress 7.0 and see the results.

After installation of Adobe Professional 7, 8 or 9, you may get the following error when you start Excel 2003 or Excel 2007:
“Compile Error in Hidden Module: Distmon”

The cause of this error is PDFMaker.xla, which loads at startup. Since Adobe Professional 8 uses DLL-addins to add the toolbar in Excel, you can safely delete the PDFMaker.xla file on your computer.
Sometimes PDFMaker.xla is located in your profile directory:
C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART\PDFMaker.xla
Other times, PDFMaker.xla can be located in your Program Files directory.

After you deleted the file PDFMaker.xla, the error “Compile Error in Hidden Module: Distmon” at startup of Excel shouldn’t appear.

The error described above has been seen in combination with the following applications:

• Adobe Acrobat Professional 7
• Adobe Acrobat Professional 8
• Adobe Acrobat Professional 9
• Microsoft Office Excel 2003
• Microsoft Office Excel 2007