Saturday, September 28, 2013

Did Your Microsoft Office Starter Stop Working Too?


About two weeks ago, the Microsoft Office Starter software on my Dell laptop stopped working after one of those weekly Windows updates. Suddenly I had weird ORANGE icons on my desktop and also in the file list when I went looking for the actual files in the folders. Although I have an extended warranty from Dell (thank goodness!), I have been absolutely dreading calling to ask them to help with this problem. If you've ever dealt with Dell tech support, you know what I'm talking about ... 

In a last ditch effort to resolve this problem myself (before giving in and calling Dell tech support), I decided to try to "repair" Office Starter. It said I would lose any UNsaved work, but of course I was freaking out that SAVED work might be lost as well. But I had to try it ... and less than 2 minutes later, I'm once again able to get into my Excel spreadsheets that I use for my business!

Just one small problem, which was super-easy to fix. After the repair, the shortcut on my desktop asked me to put media in the F: drive. I work off of a flash drive and it's the E: drive. So I deleted the old shortcut and made a new one, which references the E. drive and it works just fine. 

BIG WHEW!!!

Oh, just in case (like me) you've never tried to repair a program, here's how you do it!
  1. Click on the Windows (Start) button.
  2. Click on Control Panel.
  3. Click on Programs.
  4. Click on Programs and Features.
  5. Find your program (Microsoft Office Starter 2010 - English).
  6. Click on Change (at the top of the list).
  7. Click the Yes button (I left the box unchecked).
  8. There will be a pop-up showing the progress of the repair. Literally, it took maybe 2 minutes and the regular icons were back on my desktop!