OFF97: SR-1 Patch Fails with Extended Characters in Office Path

• Microsoft Office 97 for Windows, Service Release 1 (SR-1)

SYMPTOMS

When you use the Microsoft Office 97 SR-1 Patch to update an installation of Microsoft Office 97, the programs included in Microsoft Office 97 may not be updated, and problems that should be corrected by installing the patch are not corrected.

When this problem occurs, you do not receive an error message. However, the patch log file, 97sr1_0.txt, contains the following messages:

   error ept0034:
   Neither command line parameter specified is an existing directory.

   -and-

   warning wpt0015:
   Old File does not exist

CAUSE

This problem may occur if the path to Microsoft Office 97 or one of the Microsoft Office 97 programs contains any extended non-English characters. For example, the problem occurs if the path includes characters with acute or grave accents, umlauts, tildes, cedillas, or circumflexes.

NOTE: Although these characters cannot be displayed here in the Knowledge Base, you can see them by running the Character Map (Charmap.exe) program that is included with Microsoft Windows 95 or Microsoft Windows NT. When you view the characters in the Arial font, many of the extended characters appear in the last two rows of the Character Map program.

WORKAROUND

Determining Whether the Problem Has Occurred

If the path to Microsoft Office 97 on your computer includes extended characters, open the patch log file, 97sr1_0.txt, and check for the presence of the messages described in the "Symptoms" section in this article. If either of the messages appear in the log file, the problem has occurred.

Working Around the Problem

To work around this problem, use either of the following methods.

Method 1:

If possible, remove Microsoft Office 97 from your computer, and then reinstall Microsoft Office 97 in a location with a path that does not include extended characters. After you reinstall Microsoft Office 97, reinstall the patch. The new patch log file that is created should not contain any error messages.

To remove Office 97, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, Point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.

2. Double-click Add/Remove Programs.

3. Click the Install/Uninstall tab, click Microsoft Office 97 in the list of installed programs, and then click Add/Remove.

If you cannot reinstall Microsoft Office 97 in a location that uses a path that does not include extended characters, contact the Microsoft Technical Support center in your specific country. If you are outside the United States, contact the Microsoft subsidiary for your area. To locate your subsidiary, see the Microsoft World Wide Offices Web site at:

   http://www.microsoft.com/worldwide/default.htm

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft product that is listed at the beginning of this article. We are researching this problem and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.

MORE INFORMATION

The patch program records a log file of all the actions it performs. The log file is named 97sr1_0.txt and is created in the Office folder in the Microsoft Office folder (the default is Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office). If you run the patch more than once, additional log files are created with the names 97sr1_1.txt, 97sr1_2.txt, and so on.

The default path for Microsoft Office 97, which is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office, does not include any extended characters.

When this problem occurs, the following files may not be updated:

   Acread80.wri   Autoclip.dll   AutoContent Wizard.pwz   Contab32.dll
   Eqnedt32.exe   Excel.exe      Excel8.olb               Excel8.srg
   Findfast.exe   Gr8409.dll     Graph8.exe               Graph8.olb
   Grintl32.dll   Html.xla       Html32.cnv               Minet.ecf
   Minet32.dll    Msaccess.exe   Msaccess.srg             Msencode.dll
   Msexcl35.dll   Mso7enu.dll    Mso97.dll                Msoc.dll
   Msrclr35.dll   Msrd2x35.dll   Msrecr35.dll             Msrepl35.dll
   Msroute.dll    Mstext35.dll   Msxbse35.dll             Outlhlp.cnt
   Zoutllib.dll   Packngo.dll    Pngsetup.ex_             Powerpnt.exe
   Pp4x322.dll    Pp7x32.dll     Pp8.srg                  Ppintl.dll
   Ppread8.txt    Ppt2html.dll   Ppt2html.ppa             Ppttools.dll
   Ppttools.ppa   Presconf.dll   Pss8.hlp                 Reports.xla
   Schdmapi.dll   Schplus.sam    Soa800.dll               T2embed.dll
   Vba332.dll     Vbacv10.dll    Vbe.dll                  Wdnew8.hlp
   Winword.exe    Wread8.txt     Wwintl32.dll             Xl8409.dll
   Xlintl32.dll   Xlread8.txt