Problems uninstalling Office 365 from a new pc and installing Office Standard 2013 32 bit

Question

We have a mix of Volume License 2013, 2016 and Office 365. New Dells are supplied with Office 365 kind of pre-installed (trialware I guess), when you run it up it says features will be unaviable on dd/mm/yyyy

Normally we run the 6 (I think) uninstallers for that come on the PCs and install Office 2016 standard 32 bit - all is good.

We have a need to install Office 2013 32 standard on a new machine and when we do and we OLE/COM automate to it we get "interface is not supported".
When I look in the registry it still have lots of references to c:\program files..\office16\winword.exe and the like.
It appears that uninstalling doesn't actually remove these and installing office 2013 doesn't replace them.

So I need to know what I need to do to safely remove all required traces so installing office 2013 standard 32 bit allows it to operate correctly and allow me to run the apps as automation servers.

Thank you for your time with this. Unfortunately at the moment - "upgrade to the latest version" is not an option.

We have run the MS SARA and that didn't help.

I am concerned about breaking the install if I just go changing the program files folder and the version of office where it occurs in the registry.

Answer 1

The simplest solution may be to clean install the operating system, then install the older version of office without worry.

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Answer 2

Hi @Anonymous - thanks and yes, a good plan. Slight problem is that we have these machines to replace that are way overdue and due to Covid we are still avoiding going onsite i.e. we are trying to do this remote. So to nuke the OS means talking through a non-techie with a USB stick - do-able.

JAC.

Answer 3

@Jason Chapman

Did you try to remove Office according to article "Manually uninstall Office"?

Besides, for Windows 10, maybe you could consider resetting the system without using image file in a USB.

Any issues, welcome to post back.

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