Remove Office command for Office 2004

Question

I have just purchased an iMac with OS 10.4.8 and it came with the Test Drive for Office 2004. Every time I open an existing Word document, it automatically switches it and saves it as 2004, and when I want to print, I get the message that I cannot print until I purchase Office 2004. I do not and cannot update to Office 2004 because I work at a university that uses Office 2001 and I need to stay compatible. I researched and followed the directions to Remove Office for Office 2004, (but kept my Office 2001), emptied the Trash, Restarted the computer, but the same thing keeps happening! I checked the Hard Drive and Office 2004 is nowhere to be found, but my Word 2001 documents are being automatically saved as Word 2004 documents and then I cannot print them. I am in a vicious cycle here and will appreciate any guidance. Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi again gracie:
Since you have Office 2001 installed as well, would recommend you make a good backup of your hard drive before deleting anything (except the preference files [plist]. I would dump all of the Microsoft preference files (Word, Office, etc), run the Office Test Drive uninstaller (I think there is one), and see if the corrects the problem. All of those things should not hurt anything.
A fairly easy way of backing up and or having a retreat paath is to make a bootable clone of your system on an external hard drive. I use a little program called SuperDuper ($28 at www.shirt-pocket.com). In that way, you are almost completely protected in the event of a hardware or software problem.
Incidentally, my Word 2004 gives a bunch of options when I do a "save as." It "says" that the save format is the same one used by Word 98 through 2004. I am no Word expert (far from it) but it seems that the formats should be compatible?????? Perhaps the test drive messed things up.
Barry