Fix Problems Upgrading Office 2010 Beta to RTM (Final) Release

Today well cover the problems we ran into, and how to fix them.

You would think upgrading from the Office 2010 Beta to the final release would be an easy process.

Unfortunately, its not always that simple.

In fact, we ran into three different scenarios where the install wasnt smooth whatsoever.

Scroll down to Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010, right-click it and select Uninstall.

Click Yes when the confirmation dialog box comes up.

Wait while Office 2010 Beta uninstalls…the amount of time it takes will vary from system to system.

To complete the uninstall process, a reboot is required.

The problem is there are leftover Office apps or stand alone Office products.

So, we need a utility that will clean them up for us.

Windows Installer Clean Up UtilityDownload and load the Clean Up Utility (link Below) following the defaults.

Now go through and remove all Office Programs or addins that you find in the list.

double-check you are just deleting Office apps and not something you need like Java for example.

If youre not sure what something is, doing a quick Google search should help you out.

For instance we had the Office labs Ribbon Hero installed… just highlight and click Remove.

Remove anything that has something to do with Office…then reboot your machine.

Then try the install again, this solved the problem in our first scenario.

Another problem we ran into is not being able to uninstall the 2010 Beta from Programs and Features.

When you go in to uninstall it, nothing happens.

Click OK to the Warning Dialog box… Now we need to delete some Registry configs.

select Start and key in regedit into the Search box and hit Enter.

Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Office and delete the folder.

Then navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ Office and delete those keys as well.

Either way just rename the folders with _OLD (without quotes) at the end.

Then go into C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft and delete any existing MS Office folders.

Where in this example we have office, Office Labs, One Note…etc.

Now we want to delete the contents of the Temp folder.

press Start and pop in %temp% into the Search box and hit Enter.

If you have some files that wont delete, just skip them as they shouldnt affect the Office install.

Then empty the Recycle Bin and kickstart your machine.

Go into Programs and configs and uninstall Microsoft Office Professional 2007.

The amount of time it takes will vary between systems.

Go through and delete any left over Office 2007 and 2010 entries.

Click OK to the warning dialog that comes up.

After thats complete, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Office and delete the folder.

In this example we have Outlook Connector, Office, and Outlook to delete.

Then delete all of the files and folders in the Temp directory.

This solved the issue and Office 2010 installed successfully.