Cannot Uninstall Office 2007 Beta from XP or Vista
Contributed by davak 
November 13, 2006 
Tagged: Microsoft Office
Office 2007 has gone gold. The new version requires uninstallation of any previous beta versions. However, many users can finding that they cannot uninstall the previous beta versions. Here are some work-arounds and fixes for this issue. I hate that “rolling back changes” error message!
In our test network, we have seen multiple errors when trying to uninstall the beta versions of Office 2007.
Other times we have seen residual errors when trying to install the official version. Here are ways that we have gotten around this issue.
Some users have just reinstalled a previous, older retail version of office. If you have a version nearby, that might be an easy fix for you.
Here is the best cocktail that I have found.
1. Make a manual way to backup your outlook information. However, this automated outlook backup tool from microsoft is better.
2. Clean out the temporary file areas with Disk Cleanup
Start Menu -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Cleanup
Make sure you clean out log files, dump files, installation files, etc.
3. Install Windows Install CleanUp. Save the utility to your desktop. You will need administrative level to install it. In vista, you will need to right-click on the setup file and select Run as administrator.
We have discussed the use of this powerful tool before. Select all the office installation entries and then click the Remove button. Click Exit when done.
4. Now you can uninstall Office 2007 Beta as you typically would from the control panel.
At this point, the program is uninstalled; however, there are still a ton of office related files in the office directories.
You can try installing the official, retail version of office 2007 at this point if you wish. I would try to clean out these directories first. Office typically lives in here… C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office
Some files may be system protected and be difficult to delete. I have not found that jumping through all the hoops to delete these are needed.
These techniques solved our various problems with uninstalling office 2007 beta. I hope you guys will find them useful.
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