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Question

Cannot find Microsoft Word installed on your system

Forum|Forum|18 years ago
May 19, 2008
58 replies
30942 views

Hi,

Wonder if anyone can help...

I just tried to generate my printed documentation in RoboHelp and everytime I try I get the error message 'Cannot find Microsoft Word installed on your system'.

It is installed, and when I go to Tools > Options > Tool Locations you can see it is pointing to the right location (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\WINWORD.EXE).

This is the first project I have done with RoboHelp 7.0 on Vista- does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

Documentation

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Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Thanks. Need replies from some of the others too.

Come on Wkugelman and Bosch-pb.

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A

Anonymous

Peter,

I found this old thread which may or may not be relevant. Howerever, I am having problems accessing the link at the end of the thread - Microsoft search problem. If anyone can access this link it may give us some pointers

previous thread

Brian

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

To anyone still having this problem, please go to Run and enter winword.exe.

Then post here whether or not Word opens.

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N

nitabeck

Inspiring

Morning, Peter.

On Vista, Word DOES start up if I enter winword.exe at Run.

Nita

B

Bosch_pb

Participating Frequently

Nope - nothting in disabled items.

BTW as we are fully paid-up customers I've just created Adobe Support Case #0180428973 for this problem, and for the problem description simply pointed the tech support guys to this forum topic. Should be more than enough to be going on with.

I will of course post any results here.

Thanks for your continued assistance, Mr Grainge.

A

Anonymous

Hi all,

As a matter of interest, have you checked if there were any Office updates at about the time the problem materialised. If more than one user was affected at the same time within an organisation, I would be suspicious of the updates. Also look for Windows updates.

Regards,

Brian

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Well while we are in the market for clutching at straws, go to Help | About in Word.

Click Disabled Items. Anything there?

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Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Just for a laugh, try opening RH for Word. I wonder if that will create a missing registry entry?

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B

Bosch_pb

Participating Frequently

Worth a try but didn't help. Thanks anyway.

I opened RH for Word (for the first time). Saved a dummy project in it. Restarted RH with an old CHM project and tried the "Printed Documentation" button.

Same old "Cannot find Microsoft Word" error, both before and after a complete reboot.

The weird thing, as I mentioned before, is that the error appeared for me one day, though I had managed to generate Word docs with the previous version (RH6). I'm unsure whether I ever managed with RH7.

A couple of colleagues have had the opposite experience: didn't work und er RH6, now it works under RH7.

B

Bosch_pb

Participating Frequently

Following my own hunch
"If protections on the OFFICE11 directory or Winword executable are the problem, wouldn't it be simpler to loosen these so that RH can use it?"

...I changed the permissions on WINWORD.EXE and the OFFICE11 directory to allow "Everyone" to read and execute. Note: This is probably a big Windows security risk, but I thought it worth the try.

Guess what? I still get the error!

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

The problem you guys have is about RH not being able to start Word to generate printed documentation which is not the same as using it as the editor.

I have not previously seen any reference to restrictions on Program Files restrictions and cannot figure out how creating a shortcut to the same exe would beat the restrictions.

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A

Anonymous

quote:

Originally posted by: Peter Grainge
The problem you guys have is about RH not being able to start Word to generate printed documentation which is not the same as using it as the editor.

I have not previously seen any reference to restrictions on Program Files restrictions and cannot figure out how creating a shortcut to the same exe would beat the restrictions.

Peter is right, there is no logical reason why my fix should work, yet it did. furthermore, after removing the html editor link to Winword, as well as the .DOC file association to ms-Word, I can still generate a Word doc. Feels like a registry issue to me. Lets see what the Adobe techs say...

A

Anonymous

I think I've the solution.
RH7 looks for the Winword.exe file in the Program Files folder, which has security restrictions to limit access.

1) Make an alias of the Winword.exe file and place it in another area (like your desktop or "My documents" folder)
2) In RH7-Tools-options-tool locations-HTML editors, point the Word entry to the new alias. Save and close everything.

RH should now find Word. Post your results for others to see!
WK

N

nitabeck

Inspiring

Sounds great... in theory... and you really had me going there!

But, alas, I can't get this solution to work on Vista. When I try in RoboHelp to browse to where I put the shortcut to Word (and I've tried putting it in different locations), Vista's Open window doesn't show any shortcuts. If I manually type in the path to the shortcut, RoboHelp tells me the path is invalid.

Nita

A

Anonymous

quote:

Originally posted by: nitabeck
Sounds great... in theory... and you really had me going there!

But, alas, I can't get this solution to work on Vista. When I try in RoboHelp to browse to where I put the shortcut to Word (and I've tried putting it in different locations), Vista's Open window doesn't show any shortcuts. If I manually type in the path to the shortcut, RoboHelp tells me the path is invalid.

Nita

My fix above has worked on a number of XP boxes. As for Vista... Time to jump over to the MS-Vista forums for a solution to VIsta's Open dialog box. You have my sympathies for having to use Vista...

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

I updated the Print Issues article on my site yesterday with another cause. Don't know if it is relevant.

Any old versions of RH still installed? Beyond that I don't know what to suggest as it seems to be unique to your machine.

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G

GoldiewAuthor

Known Participant

I have been trying again to resolve this issue today with no luck, including the possibilites in the topic Bosch_pb provided.

I was hoping someone could tell me if anyone who had this problem has now resolved it and how?

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