OFF97: "Unknown User" Appears After Installing from Network Server

ID: Q182968

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Office 97 for Windows
Microsoft Excel 97 for Windows

SYMPTOMS

When you start Microsoft Excel 97, the splash screen may contain the following text:

Unknown User
Uninstalled Version

This problem may also occur when you click About Microsoft Excel on the Help menu.

CAUSE

This problem may occur when the following conditions are true:

You install Microsoft Excel 97 or Microsoft Office 97 from an administrative installation (setup /a) point that is located on a network server.

-and-

When you run the Setup program to install Excel or Office, you use the /b3 switch to perform a Run From Network Server installation.

-and-

When you run the Setup program, you also use any of the following /q or /qn switches to perform a quiet installation:
/q /q0 /q1 /qt /qn1 /qnt

For example, the problem may occur when you run the Setup program by using the following command line:

\\server\share\setup.exe /b3 /q1

Note that this problem does not affect the other programs that are included in Microsoft Office 97; only Microsoft Excel 97 is affected.

RESOLUTION

To prevent this problem from occurring, use the /n switch when you run the Setup program with the /b3 and /q switches, as in the following example:

\\server\share\setup.exe /b3 /q1 /n "J. User"

NOTE: If you previously installed a Microsoft program on your computer and the Setup program requested your name, you can use empty quotation marks ("") after the /n switch, as in the following example:

\\server\share\setup.exe /b3 /q1 /n ""

However, if you do this when no user name is stored in the Microsoft Windows registry, the problem described in this article still occurs.

For more information about Office Setup switches, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q158503 OFF97: Setup Switches for Microsoft Office 97

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article.

Additional query words: OFF97 XL97 rns rfns


Keywords          : kbsetup offwinsetup offadmin 
Version           : WINDOWS:97
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbbug

Last Reviewed: July 21, 1999