Problems With Office 97 Service Release 2 Reported

Users say this month's patch to the leading office suite can raise further problems.

Anne Fischer Lent, special to PC World

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In case Office 97's Service Release 1 wasn't buggy enough, Service Release 2 may be worse, according to a report released by the bug-fix and reporting service BugNet. In fact, BugNet recommends not installing SR-2 if you have any Office 97 applications dating from the first half of 1997 on your system. SR-2 will choke, according to BugNet, if it detects the "base" version of Office 97. If your system successfully handled the SR-1 upgrade, then the SR-2 fix on top of it may not cause problems.

SR-2 provides fixes for Office 97 as well as updated Eurocurrency and Year 2000 support, which may be vital to some users. You can find out if you have a newer version or the SR-1 fix installed by opening each Office application and selecting Help, About. If the About dialog box names the application, followed by SR-1, you're up to date, but still may not be out of the woods.

The problem with the SR-2 upgrade, as reported by users in Microsoft's Office-support discussion group, is that SR-2 won't install despite a successful SR-1 installation. One frustrated user complained that, "I've just spent almost the whole afternoon downloading Service Pack 1 and 2 for my Office 97 Professional Edition. Office updated with the first service pack without any problem.... [But] no matter how many times I try installing Service Pack 1, Service Pack 2 maintains Service Pack 1 wasn't installed and it will not continue."

Microsoft Offers Workaround
Microsoft was quick to respond to the complaints by issuing a workaround only ten days after the release of SR-2. BugNet noted, however, that the process, which is described in Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q192816, "is so tortuous and lengthy that most users will probably want to avoid it."

BugNet summarizes the steps as follows:

1. Search for and delete duplicate program files.
2. Delete files with incorrect versions.
3. Verify the Mso97.dll key in your Registry.
4. Reinstall Office 97 SR-1.
5. Reinstall Office 97 SR-2.

BugNet advises Office 97 users to contact Microsoft or their authorized Microsoft tech support provider to walk them through the steps. While SR-1 takes less than an hour to download, SR-2 takes a full 2 hours and 21 minutes at 28.8 kbps. The Registry editing and download time combined could amount to a full day's work.

BugNet reported another problem that wipes out personal registration information, telling you you're an unknown user. And this can occur even if you've successfully installed SR-2. To fix this problem, according to Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q160025, you simply start from scratch and reinstall Office 97.

For those brave enough to venture forth, links to the two fixes are available on the right.

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