Can only access MS Office help files as an administrator

Ranger4 said:

A thought has come to mind that it might be worthwhile completely uninstalling Office 2007 again using the methods in the MS website.

Office can sometimes be very hard to completely uninstall. If you just used the usual Control Panel method from Programs & Features to uninstall it, the problem you are having with the Help files may remain lurking there with the new reinstall.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/kb/928218

Yes, it's quite possible that I didn't uninstall Office completely or correctly. I ran the setup / uninstall program, which ran successfully. However, most if not all of the MS Office files were still in the installation folder on my hard disk even after uninstalling with MS Office setup. My normal practice had been to delete lingering program files before re-installing a program. In this case I thought the remaining files would be automatically deleted or replaced correctly by the re-installation, so I didn't see a need to delete them manually.

I started reading the "Install updates" article you sent, and had the idea to re-install a Windows update pertaining to MS Office. Then I discovered that Windows Update no longer works. I restarted the Windows update and security center services - no luck there, it didn't help.

That led to my attempt to diagnose the file system itself. I found in the event viewer a recent entry in reference to severe corruption on my hard disk. I ran sfc / scannow, which reported at least a couple of corrupted system files; the others were replaced when I ran sfc / scannow. I have a good idea of how to replace the corrupt files once I find them, but I don't know which files they are. I ran chkdsk /F /R /X, which reported no bad sectors on my HD. Neither did Office diagnostics find anything wrong with the disk.

I can send an excerpt from the txt file I created from CBS.log. That's my best chance so far to fix the file corruption problem.

Ranger4 said:

A thought has come to mind that it might be worthwhile completely uninstalling Office 2007 again using the methods in the MS website.

Office can sometimes be very hard to completely uninstall. If you just used the usual Control Panel method from Programs & Features to uninstall it, the problem you are having with the Help files may remain lurking there with the new reinstall.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/kb/928218

I started reading the "Install updates" article you sent a link to, and had the idea to re-install a Windows update pertaining to MS Office. Then I discovered that Windows Update no longer works. I restarted the Windows update and security center services - no luck there, it didn't help.

Next I ran sfc /scannow, which reported that corrupt files were found that sfc couldn't fix. In addition I saw an error in the event viewer that severe corruption exists in the file system. Can you help me identify the corrupt files so I can replace them? I sent a reply to your last response to this thread with the title of "File system instability observed". It gives additional details about this problem. I don't know if you saw it or not.

Follow option 3 of this tutorial to reset windows update. Note that this will clear your update history but not the updates and the first check after you perform the steps will take longer than normal since the related folder will need to be rebuilt. Windows Update - Reset

townsbg said:

Follow option 3 of this tutorial to reset windows update. Note that this will clear your update history but not the updates and the first check after you perform the steps will take longer than normal since the related folder will need to be rebuilt. Windows Update - Reset

Thanks townsbg. Is there a way to reset Windows update without clearing the update history?

accordeoniste said:

townsbg said:

Follow option 3 of this tutorial to reset windows update. Note that this will clear your update history but not the updates and the first check after you perform the steps will take longer than normal since the related folder will need to be rebuilt. Windows Update - Reset

Thanks townsbg. Is there a way to reset Windows update without clearing the update history?

Option 2 of that link I posted won't clear history but it might not fix the problem either. Option 3 is more likely to fix the problem. As stated by ranger4 this only clears the history however the updates are still installed. The history isn't really that important.

Ranger / townsbg,

Because of all the time I spent on these problems until yesterday, I decided to take a shortcut to solving the system corruption problem. I ran system restore using a restore point within a month after Windows was re-installed due to a hard disk failure. The registry, therefore, is technically only about three weeks old, instead of nearly six months old as it was before.

I then ran sfc /scannow; it reported no integrity violations. Windows Update works fine again. I lost some calendar data in Mozilla Thunderbird and I had to reinstall five months of Windows updates. It was a small price to pay for not having to troubleshoot the system corruption when I'm behind in my work schedule.

Now all the Office programs run correctly except for MS Word. If Word is run as Administrator while in a user account I'll see the "There was a problem sending a command to the program" error. If it's not run as the Administrator I won't have access to the help files. In addition to what I previously tried to get it to work, I ran the winword.exe /r command (as recommended on a couple of websites I consulted), which didn't work either. It appears to be a bug. I don't really want to spend much more time troubleshooting it. I suppose I'll have to live with it.

Thanks so much for helping me troubleshoot these problems. I'd post a copy of my CBS.log file here for reference but I don't think it's relevant any more since I restored the registry. I can always restore the system to the same restore point, or restore a system image if this happens again. It may eventually make more sense to replace any corrupt files. They appeared to be missing from the CBS log, but reference to the log would've at least been a starting point in identifying them. If you think of anything that would help in this situation with either system maintenance or solving the MS Word problem, I'd be especially glad to hear your suggestion(s).

Ranger4 said:

Thanks for getting back & updating us on the latest developments. So apart from the Word problem all seems to be working properly.

Have you tried running the Office 2007 Repair. Follow the directions in this MS website.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/kb/924614

That's right, all is working properly except for MS Word, MS Excel and the calendar program in Mozilla Thunderbird. I thought about creating a new restore point, running the system restore program again, returning to the same restore point and backing up the calendar data properly. Then I realized there's a good chance the newly created restore point would vanish, since it wouldn't have existed at that earlier time. I'd have to reconfigure various programs and re-install Windows updates a second time, and would waste all the time I spent doing it the first time.

Concerning MS Word and Excel, I can run these programs without incident as the Administrator. Another standard user can run them with the help function but only the online version. In my own account as a standard user, I still cannot access either the built-in or the online help function. The other MS Office programs run properly in my account as long as I run them as the Administrator. This perplexed me to the point that I examined the permissions of the Word and Excel executable files for clues. I could fine none except for the fact that in my account, the Word executable lists my account. When I removed the permissions for it, it made no difference to my being able to access the help files.

I ran the Office diagnostic program. It made a repair to the MS Office installation, but didn't say what the repair was. This didn't help me access the help function in my own account either.

The only reasonable explanation for this behavior I can think of is that at the time I installed MS Office, which would've been prior to the January restore point (meaning it was reinstalled in early January), I installed it as myself as an administrative user, and not as the Administrator, with UAC disabled. Installing it that way may have thwarted the normal assigning of permissions by Windows. That's why I believe the solution is to re-install Office with UAC enabled, but not before assuring that it's completely uninstalled. Do you agree?