Microsoft has been readying its latest update to Office for Mac, and recently released its first preview. We decided to give it a whirl and wanted uninstall Office 2011 to avoid any conflicts. Much to our surprise, uninstalling Office 2011 for Mac is a terribly complicated affair.
It's no great mystery why we'd want to uninstall Office 2011. It's just never felt like a real OS X application, or even a decent version of Office. Yes, it gets the job done but the interface is a mess and downright ugly.
The new version of Office by contrast is clean and much more Office-looking.
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Speaking of Windows, uninstalling Office on it is a simple matter of opening Programs & Features from the Control Panel and removing the application there. It takes a few minutes and is entirely automated.
Removing Office 2011 on Mac however, can be best described as a labyrinthine process. Microsoft lays the process out in this support document, but it's a little difficult to follow.
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It won't hurt your Mac to simply drag the application folder to the trash and move on from there, but the Office installation (which is automated) places files all over your Mac, so if you really want it all gone, you have to root around your hard drive and delete everything by hand.
Step Zero: Quit Everything
Installing Office On A Flash Drive
The first thing you need to do before you can remove Office 2011 is to make sure none of its applications are running. The easiest way to do this is to simply use 'Command + Tab' to switch between running apps.
If any are running, simply use 'Command + Q' to quit them.
Remove the Office Folder and Dock Icons
Open your Applications folder and locate the 'Microsoft Office 2011 folder. Click and drag it to the trash.
While you're at it, you can also remove the Office icons from your Dock (if you have any pinned there). The simplest way to do this is to click and drag them out of the Dock.
Microsoft divides this into two steps. You could simply stop here Office would be basically uninstalled, but as we said before, there's a lot of little files that Office writes all over you drive. If you want it all gone, roll up your sleeves and get to it.
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Removing the Preferences, Subscription File, and License
Once you remove the application files, it's time to start removing all the little files spread throughout your system. One of the best ways to navigate your way through the Finder, is to use the Go menu.
To remove the preferences, open the Library in your Home folder. Click 'Go,' hold the 'Option' key, and click 'Library.'
Navigate to the 'Preferences' and arrange everything by Name. It's probably a good idea to change your view in Finder to a list.
Select all the files (you can hold 'Shift' to select a range of files) that start with 'com.microsoft' and drag them to the trash.
Remember, these preference files contain customizations you've made for things like toolbars, keyboard shortcuts, and custom dictionaries. If you remove them and later reinstall Office 2011, you will need to redo your customizations.
While you're in this folder, you can remove the subscriptions files. Open the 'ByHost' folder, arrange everything by Name and drag anything starting with 'com.microsoft' to the Trash.
When you install Office and you input your license info, it creates a file. Open 'Computer' from the Go menu (you can use 'Shift + Command + C') , double-click to open your system drive (it might be 'Macintosh HD' unless you've renamed it), then open 'Library -> Preferences' and drag 'com.microsoft.office.licensing.plist' to the Trash.
Microsoft recommends you restart your computer at this point to remove any files that are cached in memory. This will be necessary before you can purge everything in the Trash.
Removing the Application Support Folder and Receipts
With your computer restarted, open 'Computer' again from the Go menu, then your system drive, and 'Library -> Application Support.'
Drag the 'Microsoft' folder to the Trash; you will need to enter your system password to complete this action.
Next, while you're still in that Library folder, open the 'Receipts' folder and see if there are any files that begin with 'Office2011_' (there probably will not be) and drag them to the Trash as well.
If you're using using OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) or OS Lion (10.7), then you will need to Go to('Shift + Command + G') the Finder folder '/private/var/db/receipts.'
Arrange the files in this folder by Name and drag every one that begins with 'com.microsoft.office' to the Trash.
Removing Custom Templates and Fonts
We're almost done, there are just a few steps more to go. The next thing we'll need to do is remove any custom templates you might have created. If you want to save these then you can simply relocate them to a safe location.
Open the 'Library' folder from the Go menu once more by holding down the 'Option' key.
Navigate to 'Application Support -> Microsoft' and drag the 'Office' folder to the Trash.
Next, you're going to again reopen the 'Computer' location, click on you system drive (Macintosh HD by default), and then 'Library -> Fonts.'
Drag the 'Microsoft' folder to the Trash. At this point, you can empty the Trash, unless you want to delete your Microsoft User Data folder in the next step.
Moving or Deleting Your Microsoft User Data
Deleting your Microsoft User Data folder is optional. If you remove this folder and you will lose all your Outlook data, among other things.
This user data folder can be found in your Documents.
It is recommend that if you want to keep this data folder, you drag it to a safe location such as the Desktop or archive it to a cloud folder.
Regardless, upon finishing this last step, restart your computer once more and you're done removing Office 2011 from your Mac.
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We hope that Microsoft includes some kind of ability in Office 2016 for Mac that will allow you to uninstall or upgrade from the previous installation. Right now however, to completely remove Office 2011, this is your best, albeit annoying, course of action.
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I'm ready to switch from Apple Pages to Microsoft Word and hear that Microsoft just released an entirely new and updated Office 2016. What's the easy way to upgrade?
You're correct that Microsoft has just released a completely new, completely redesigned version of its flagship product, Microsoft Office, for Mac systems. In fact, it's a cross-platform release and is new for Windows systems too, along with iPad, Android and Windows tablet support and a completely different way of working with OneDrive, Microsoft's cloud storage system (that competes with iCloud, Apple's cloud storage system).
The entire Microsoft Office 2016 suite for Mac includes Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Word and Outlook, though it sounds like you might only be looking for the word processor piece of that (Microsoft Word). Unlike previous years when it was priced at almost $500 for the entire suite of programs, Microsoft's apparently rethought its pricing strategy too and you can get everything for $150 in the Home & Student download edition through, for example, Amazon.com.
We were lucky here at AskDaveTaylor in that Microsoft sent us along a license key for testing and review purposes. That's my disclosure too, in case you're wondering. 🙂
To get started with the download, you can log in to the Office 365 site after you've received your license key (either from Amazon, Microsoft.com, or from purchasing a license at the local retail store). It'll look like this:
If you look closely, you'll see that mine shows 'PC/Mac Installs Used: 0'. This is a big deal, actually, because for the first time I can remember, Microsoft is using the same license for either platform. With this license, I get five installs, whether I want to use them on Macs, Windows systems, iPads, or my Windows Phone is up to me. Very nice improvement over the Mac license as completely separate from a Windows license.
To proceed, I'll click 'Install >'.
Look at that list of 'Other Devices'. So impressive!
But let's stay focused on the Mac side. You can see that since I am already on a MacBook Pro, it's default selected 'Office 2016 for Mac' as the version to install.
Sounds good! A click on 'Install' and it'll download the Office Installer:
I found this download to move pretty quickly, but depending on connectivity, it might take you a few minutes to get the entire package.
Once downloaded, the installer should pop right up and start:
If you've used the Mac for any length of time, you're already familiar with this process.
Let's look at one thing, however: disk space required. That's shown on a subsequent screen:
It's slightly disappointing that there's no way to pick and choose which of the Microsoft Office 2016 tools you want to install — in your case, perhaps just Word, in our case, everything but Outlook — but that's something that can hopefully be tweaked after installation. Meanwhile, just notice the install takes up 6.78GB of space on your computer.
Before you start the install, then, make sure you have that much disk space!
A click on 'Install', a few additional clicks to accept a user license that you're not going to read (we don't!) and…
Hurray! We're done.
Well, almost.
Click 'Close' and you'll have Word 2016 launch, but with a few informational windows along the way, starting with this highlight of updated features and capabilities:
Okay, sounds good!
Click on 'Get started >' to proceed and Office actually starts up:
It really is smart to use this account because it makes it absolutely a no-brainer to have cloud-based backups of your documents, spreadsheets, presentations and related.
Once you're signed in, there's one more step:
I picked Colorful – it's very nice! – and, finally, a click on 'Continue >' and Microsoft Word 2016 finally launches.
Office 2016 installed. Mission accomplished.
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And boy is the interface a much overdue facelift and improvement, as you can see in this peek at a column I'm writing for the local newspaper in Microsoft Word 2016:
Huge props to Microsoft for a very, very well done upgrade. Office 2016 feels like a completely new and very Mac-friendly application suite that might just replace Pages, Numbers, Keynote and the rest of the Apple office suite on our Mac systems here in the office. Not to mention on our Windows systems!
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