Cannot find Microsoft Word installed on your system

[Goldiew]

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

[RoboColum_n_]

Hi Goldiew.
Just checking that RH7 was installed after MS Word? If not, it won't be able to find it.

[Goldiew]

Hi Colum,

Thanks for the quick reply- RH7 was installed after Word, so I have just uninstalled and re-installed RH7 hoping this would fix this issue, but it didn't...

Is there another way to rectify this you know of?

[RoboColum_n_]

Do you have Open Office installed? If so, this can cause a conflict. See the first item at this link for an explanation and fix.

[Goldiew]

Hi,

I don't have Open Office installed, but thought it may be worth a try to un-install both Office and Robohelp and re-install them in the right order (Office then RoboHelp)...

This has failed to work... Don't suppose you have any other ideas?

Thanks/Kate

[RoboColum_n_]

Can you import a word file into your project? What version of Word are you using?

[Goldiew]

Yes- it has no problem importing a word file..

I am using Office 2007...

[RoboColum_n_]

Is this issue limited to one project. Create a new project with a couple of topics and see if the same problem occurs. It may also be worth ensuring you have the 7.0.1 patch installed.

[HKabaker]

A longshot:

Is your RH project on your local hard drive, and are you generating print doc to the same hard drive?

Harvey

[MergeThis]

Not entirely sure this will help, but...

In Word (2003), select Tools > Options > Security > Macro Security. In the Security Level tab, a selection of Very High or High will disable most macros (which RH needs to work with Word).


Good luck,
Leon

[Bosch_pb]

Hi all,
Was this ever resolved? My entire documentation group has this problem!


WinXP SP1
RH7 7.02.001
MS Office Word 2003 SP3 (i.e. MS WOrd V11.0)

Questions checked so far (see previous entries)
* Do you have Open Office installed? NO
* Is this issue limited to one project? NO, nor to one user.
* Is your RH project on your local hard drive, and are you generating print doc to the same hard drive? YES
* In Word (2003), select Tools > Options > Security > Macro Security. In the Security Level tab... LEVEL IS MEDIUM

We are frequently asked for printable/editable versions of our helpfiles, so this is a major problem for us. All help appreciated.
Thanks.

[Goldiew]

Hi,

This was my original post and I have still not resolved this issue. My collegue never had this issue and so is gnerating my printed doc for me.

He seems to think it is an issue where you should install Robohelp after installing Office (something I didn't do!). I tried to un-install all and re-install in the order he suggests but had no luck. Maybe this is worth a try for you?

[MergeThis]

In an earlier post (5/20), you said: "and re-install them in the right order (Office then RoboHelp)."

Today, you say: "you should install Robohelp after installing Office (something I didn't do!)."

???????????????


Good luck,
Leon

[Goldiew]

The same thing- just written differently???

[Bosch_pb]

Thanks Goldiew,

I definitely installed RH7 AFTER MS Office.

Perhaps the Adobe people should say which they prefer, but think about it, they would be crazy to ask their users to de-install MS-Word before installing RH7!!


BTW: I also checked the tool locations dialog. In my case also they match.
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\winword.exe - CORRECT


This seems such a basic functionality it is hard to believe it doesn't work on RH7. I never had a problem with it under RH6 and Win2k. [Aside] On the other hand RH6 used to crash frequently when I saved files, and that has (TG!) now stopped, at least for the present.

[Peter Grainge]

Adobe don't ask you to deinstall Word first. Simply that RH is installed after Word.

Was RH installed with admin rights?

Have you looked under Printed Documentation Issues on my site? There is some information there about "Word has not been started".

[Bosch_pb]

Yes, Robohelp was installed with Admin rights.

Thanks - I found a couple of hints on http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/printing/print_issues.htm
I will let you know if anything works.

[nitabeck]

Was there ever a definitive solution found? Today I discovered the same problem with RHX7 running on Vista, but not RHX7 running on XP Pro. I've got Word 2003 installed (prior to RH) on both machines. (And I would swear that I did not have this problem with RHX7 on Vista with Word 2003 in the recent past, though I can't be sure.)

Nita Beck

[nitabeck]

And let me add that RoboHelp 7 for Word (please excuse my calling it "X7" above... old habits...) finds Word 2003 just fine. It's RoboHelp 7 HTML that can't find Word 2003.

Nita

[Peter Grainge]

No. The possibilities I know of are in the topic Bosch_pb has provided.

[Bosch_pb]

Sorry - I won't be able to try out the hints on http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/printing/print_issues.htm for at least a couple more weeks.

What I can report is that two of my colleagues, who had the same problem, suddenly don't have it any more. We have no idea why it suddenly works (i.e. what changed in their Windows environments). The two are at totally different locations and have different PC-setups. The problem persists for me, unfortunately.

[Aside - to whom it may concern]
I confess to being very annoyed that Adobe Tech Support haven't yet addressed this very basic and detrimental issue at source, but leave it to users to thrash it out in a "forum". By this I mean no disrespect (quite the contrary!) to Mr Grainge, who has provided most of the help so far. My experience with Adobe products, starting only a year and a half ago, has so far been very negative.

[Guest]

I am encountering the same problem. I am on a machine that was set up to conenct to Citrix to access MS Word. As a test I dropped a Word file on my desktop - I clicked to open it and it goes through Citrix instead of using the local copy of Word- so it makes sense the RoboHelp wouldn't be able to find my local copy of Word. I'm in the process of working with my sys admin to look into this further.

Update-- the sys admin disabled the citrix agent - the citrix icon no longer appears in the system tray. This also causes the .DOC extenstion to be associated with the local copy for Word instead of the Citrix copy. Next he rebuilt my profile. Works now!

[Peter Grainge]

LolaLittle

I was just going to ask you to post the outcome and I see you have amended your post to cover that. Thank you. That could be quite useful.

[Goldiew]

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?

[Peter Grainge]

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.