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!
- Click on the Windows (Start) button.
- Click on Control Panel.
- Click on Programs.
- Click on Programs and Features.
- Find your program (Microsoft Office Starter 2010 - English).
- Click on Change (at the top of the list).
- Click the Yes button (I left the box unchecked).
- 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!
