"PowerPC" applications work for only one profile

[CRG]

Running Office 2011 and Office for Mac 2011 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook), up-dated on 12/28/14. Office app work fine when I access them. All other user trying to use those apps get the message "You can't open the application 'Microsoft Word' because Power PC applications are no longer supported." How do I make the apps available for all users on our system?

 

[CRG]

CLARIFICATION ON PREVIOUS: I'm not running two Office suites, just the Office for Mac 2011.

 

[honestone]

A couple fo things:

1. Last week, Microsoft released an update to Office 2011, bringing it to version 14.5.0. You can get it from here:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=46973

2. When you say other users, are those other users on other machines? Also, what kind of license did you purchase with Office 2011? If it's single user, then it can only be run on your machine, under your Administrator account. If, though, you purchased 3 licenses for it, then it can be installed on 3 different machines, under different owners for each machine.

3. What kind of Mac are you using this on, and also what specific OS are you using? (I did see one link where it stated that the "The Office 2011 14.1.2 update should have addressed PowerPC issues").

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome

It is strange you are getting this error, as Apple dropped support for PowerPC apps starting with Mac OS X Lion 10.7. Microsoft Office 2004 was PowerPC, but would run on Intel Macs using Rosetta. Microsoft Office 2008 was a Universal Binary and the last version that supported PowerPC. Microsoft Office 2011 requires an Intel Mac and will not even install on older PowerPC Macs.

honestone's questions can help us narrow down the issue.

C

 

[CRG]

A couple fo things:

1. Last week, Microsoft released an update to Office 2011, bringing it to version 14.5.0. You can get it from here:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=46973

2. When you say other users, are those other users on other machines? Also, what kind of license did you purchase with Office 2011? If it's single user, then it can only be run on your machine, under your Administrator account. If, though, you purchased 3 licenses for it, then it can be installed on 3 different machines, under different owners for each machine.

3. What kind of Mac are you using this on, and also what specific OS are you using? (I did see one link where it stated that the "The Office 2011 14.1.2 update should have addressed PowerPC issues").

HI honestone - thx for the reply.
1) I will hold off for just a bit before using the link you provided to get my Office up to date. I'm concerned doing something more at this point will only make things worse.
2) All users are on this machine - no other devices are used with this Office-Mac suite. When we purchased the iMac, we specifically asked for the version of Office that could be used by all user accounts - as was our previous Office-Mac suite. As recently as last fall (Oct-Nov - can't pin it down more precisely than that) all the Office-Mac applications were working with all the user logins.
3) Our iMac is the 21.5-inch, Late 2013 hardware running OS X Yosemite version 10.10.3
4) not germane to this forum, I'm getting the same error message with Quicken 2007 - purchased/installed in 2013.

Thank you again for your help!

 

[honestone]

First, Microsoft today released another Office 2011 update, Version 14.5.1. You can get it from here:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=47307

Secondly, it seems like there is a possible permissions issue, or some other "system" level software issue. Do you ever perform any disk maintenance/repairs on the machine? If not, it would be good to get into the habit of doing that.

Also, do you have a more robust disk maintenance/repair program like Disk Warrior or TechToolPro? They are superior to Disk Utility.

I'm going to assume that you only have Disk Utility. Sio, here is what you can try:

1. There should be a Recovery Partition on your machine. To get to it, when you start up the machine, press the Command and R keys simultaneously. This link explains this, along with what you can do with the software on that partition:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

Note that it says "Verify and repair connected drives using Disk Utility.". So, what you need to do is do a Verify and Repair Disk at the Volume (Top) level of your internal drive, then 1) Verify and Repair Permissions at the Partition Level of the drive, and 2) Verify and Repair Disk at that same Partition Level.

2. Re-boot your machine, and then download the excellent freeware program Onyx. This venerable gem has been around for quite some time, has consistently had positive reviews, and does some real good things. I have been using it for such a long time that I depend on it as part of my disk maintenance/repair/backup processing. You can get it form here (new Yosemite version came out today):

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/11582/onyx

When you run it, do all the Maintenance and Cleanup tasks. One of the maintenance tasks is Repair Permissions, but Onyx repairs permissions for all software. Disk Utility does it only for Apple software. So, this could possibly help with the issues you are having with the third party software Office 2011 and Quicken 2007 (I have both of those also, along with quite a few other third party programs).

 

[CRG]

First, Microsoft today released another Office 2011 update, Version 14.5.1. You can get it from here:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=47307

Secondly, it seems like there is a possible permissions issue, or some other "system" level software issue. Do you ever perform any disk maintenance/repairs on the machine? If not, it would be good to get into the habit of doing that.

Also, do you have a more robust disk maintenance/repair program like Disk Warrior or TechToolPro? They are superior to Disk Utility.

I'm going to assume that you only have Disk Utility. Sio, here is what you can try:

1. There should be a Recovery Partition on your machine. To get to it, when you start up the machine, press the Command and R keys simultaneously. This link explains this, along with what you can do with the software on that partition:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

Note that it says "Verify and repair connected drives using Disk Utility.". So, what you need to do is do a Verify and Repair Disk at the Volume (Top) level of your internal drive, then 1) Verify and Repair Permissions at the Partition Level of the drive, and 2) Verify and Repair Disk at that same Partition Level.

2. Re-boot your machine, and then download the excellent freeware program Onyx. This venerable gem has been around for quite some time, has consistently had positive reviews, and does some real good things. I have been using it for such a long time that I depend on it as part of my disk maintenance/repair/backup processing. You can get it form here (new Yosemite version came out today):

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/11582/onyx

When you run it, do all the Maintenance and Cleanup tasks. One of the maintenance tasks is Repair Permissions, but Onyx repairs permissions for all software. Disk Utility does it only for Apple software. So, this could possibly help with the issues you are having with the third party software Office 2011 and Quicken 2007 (I have both of those also, along with quite a few other third party programs).

honestone,
WOW - I really appreciate your making the time to provide these detailed suggestions; as you suspect, I've not been diligent in system maintenance. I look forward to clean-up and improvement in performance.