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General discussion

MS Office Starter Edition

Aug 1, 2010 1:29AM PDT

My Win 7 Pro 64 bit PC came with Office 2010 Starter. As best I can tell this 'Starter' edition is the home/student version that does not include Outlook.

I loaded a retail copy of Office Home and Business 2010, which appears to work OK. In a similar install on my laptop the installation of the retail copy automatically removed the pre-installed office trial version but that did not happen with Office Starter.

Do I need to remove the "Office Starter" software? If so, will that require a clean re-install of the retail Home and Business product?

I have a lot of customization to do on Outlook (installing certificates, ...) and I don't want to go down that road if I'm going to have to do everything all over again.

Any thoughts?

Discussion is locked

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That depends
Aug 1, 2010 4:13AM PDT

During the installation of the retail version, did you see an option to "overwrite the existing install or install to a different location?"

We generally recommend that any trial version Office software is uninstalled first, then the system rebooted, before installing new versions, but since your install seems to have worked without any problem perhaps that wasn't critical in your case.

Does Windows 7's Programs & Features option in the Control Panel still list this Starter kit as a separate install to the new one? If so, uninstalling it from there should be OK.

But whatever you decide, best that you do it before any customization.

Mark

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I'll try uninstalling it ...
Aug 1, 2010 4:34AM PDT

The 'Programs and Features' listed it separately so I'll try uninstalling it.
The 'Programs and Features' ALSO listed 'Microsoft Office Click to Run' and I see that there is a protected drive (QHappy with that label but no entry in 'Programs and Features'. Hmmm. I don't know about Office Click to Run. Is that related to the Starter version? Although it has a separate entry in 'Programs and Features' I do not see any corresponding entries in the Programs folder structure. I wonder why Microsoft Office' needs 3 entries in 'Programs and Features'? (Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Office Click-to-Run 2010, Microsoft Office Home and Business 2010) each with its own install date?

During the installation I did not see an option to uninstall the 'Starter' version. I suspect that there was an option to choose the installation directory but I accepted the defaults for program location. I think the only 'optional' thing I changed was a set of templates for one of the programs. If memory serves, there wasn't really an option regarding how to handle the pre-loaded office programs on the other PC ... the installation package just announced that was was going to uninstall all previous versions of Office.

Thankfully I have not had any hugely pressing need for email/calendar that I could not handle via webmail access. At some point, though, I will need the s/mime security certificates and other things that the web does not handle well. Maybe this will go smoothly. Here's hoping!

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That's a new one to me.
Aug 1, 2010 4:41AM PDT

But I found, Learn more about Office Click-to-Run at Microsoft about it.

Looks like a new feature from MS, Happy

I also found, Update, repair, or uninstall Office Click-to-Run. Looks like you can remove it via the Control Panel > Programs & Features listing, but I would perhaps do all that before getting 'stuck in' with the version you will be using. You never know..

Good luck.

Mark

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Office 2010 starter
Aug 12, 2010 8:18AM PDT

I'm getting a HP desktop with the stupid Office 2010 starter pre-installed. And I will be replacing that with Office 2010 professional. If I understand there are 3 areas of Office starter to uninstall. Do you know if that is correct. I basically want to make sure Office starter is totally removed before I install the full version. I've read a lot of people are having issues in the installation.

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I didn't uninstall initially ...
Aug 12, 2010 9:58AM PDT

As I noted before, when I installed retail Office on one PC it offered to remove the Starter Edition as part of the installation so I didn't think about doing it on this PC. I uninstalled Starter Edition from Control Panel after I installed the retail version. I have not had any problems. YMMV.

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Should be no problem
Aug 12, 2010 10:09PM PDT

Hmm from further reading it seems the problems might be with the intital/beta version of Office 2010 starter. This makes sense that Microsoft would include this, but I guess worst case I goto their support and download the fixit. Just curious if anybody else is having issues.