MS Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 1 (12.1.0) – Issues & Solutions
I’m reporting this almost 2 weeks after the mega update was announced. You can download it from here if you have already not auto updated it (I like to download my updates rather then updating them on the fly, predictable stupidities can happen)
The Issue:
Yes, once you have updated your mac with the service pack, it becomes a Brick. You enter into alice and the wonderland kind of situation leading you nowhere. The biggest headache is you can’t access entourage and OMG no work can be done till you resolve this monster you have created.
Before you Update!!!!
Before you start the update, Please please please “Backup” your entourage data. I have written about it before, using Tiger / Entourage 2004 and it works like a charm for Leopard 10.5.x / Entourage 2008. Lets say if you encounter such a big problem that we have to revert back to our original 12.0.0 version of MS Office 2008, then we would be able to use this backup. Note! During the update process, the Entourage DB is updated and becomes unusable with 12.0.0 release.
Update done, now what to do?
You are getting into this round-robin issue due to these 2 files. Delete them:
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Microsoft Messenger User Cache.plist
/Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Office/OfficePID.plist
Now click on Entourage and the update Wizard will guide you through rest of the process. You will be asked to provide your Key again. For unknown reason my key was recognized as a valid key but the button was Not clickable. What the …? Searching on the web, I realized I wasn’t the only one. Solution:
I hope your update goes as smooth as mine. But it gave me many opportunities, i’ll list them down:
- My mailbox was about 3GB, with a bit of spring cleaning I was able to bring it down to 1.5 GB (cool!)
- Entourage data, just like its windows sibling outlook stores all its data in ONE db file. I had issues with PST files, haven’t yet encountered any issue with Entourage yet – but the net says it can be anyday
- Alternatives to Entourage? Many, I’m going to try out Apple Mail 3.0
Tags: Entourage 2008, issue, Serial, Service Pack 1, solution
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