Uninstalling Office 2011 For Mac



By following steps above, you are close to uninstalling Office 2011 for Mac. Now empty Trash and restart your computer to finish removal of Office 2011 for Mac. Part 2: The Common Problems of Uninstalling Office 2011 on Mac Manually. Based on our practice, manual removal of Office 2011 for Mac usually takes 5-10 minutes. Just a small clarification – I have the Office 2011 for Mac trial version which I want to completely and permanently remove. I also have Office 2004 installed which I want to keep. Do I need to do anything in particular to protect the files etc for Office 2004 before I run your uninstall tool? Step Zero: Quit Everything. The first thing you need to do before you can remove Office 2011 is to.

Learning has never been so easy!

It’s no great mystery why we’d want to uninstall Office 2011.

8 Steps total

Step 1: Quit Everything

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

Step 2: 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.

Step 3: 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.

Step 4: 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.

Step 5: Removing Receipts

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.”

Step 6: 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.

Step 7: Removing Fonts

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.

Step 8: 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.

Uninstall microsoft office from macUninstall

I 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, a bit annoying, course of action.

References

  • How to geek

3 Comments

Uninstalling Office 2011 For Mac

  • Tabasco
    austin janey Apr 9, 2015 at 04:08pm

    Alternatively there is a mac app called appCleaner by freemacsoft that does most of the work for you it looks for associated files and grabs them then deletes them its pretty fantastic and will do clean uninstalls of pretty much any program not just office.

  • Mace
    AceOfSpades Apr 9, 2015 at 06:55pm

    Also available is a script from http://www.officeformachelp.com/office/install/remove-office/ see bottom of the page to download it.

  • Thai Pepper
    Priyal (Stellar Info Tech) Apr 14, 2015 at 10:03am

    Stellar Speedup Mac is another choice to remove Leftovers of any application including Office for Mac 2011. It cleans those files which weren't removed by the OS X at the time of uninstalltion. This is the free feature of the software.

Microsoft Office has been one of the most popular suites of applications on the Mac for three decades. It’s also one of the most unpopular – Mac users really do have a love/hate relationship with it. Lots of people install it, use it, then get so annoyed with it they uninstall it. However, uninstalling Office isn’t as easy as it should be, so here’s a step-by-step guide to show you how to uninstall every part of Microsoft Office.

What is Microsoft Office?

Office is a suite of tools that comprises: Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, and OneDrive. To use such apps, you can either subscribe to Office 365 on Microsoft's website and download the apps from there or download the individual apps from the Mac App Store and buy a subscription as an in-app purchase.

Subscriptions are annual and there are several different tiers, each of which provides a different level of service with regard to the number of devices you can install Office apps on.

Why is it so difficult to uninstall Office?

Good question! On Windows PCs, Microsoft offers an uninstall utility that allows you to remove Office or any Office app with a few clicks. However, on a Mac, you have to do it the manual way. That means not just removing the app binaries themselves, but hunting down all the other ‘junk’ files that Microsoft Office installs on your Mac.

Backup your data

Once you’ve uninstalled Office, you will obviously not be able to open any files you have that are in Microsoft formats like .doc, .xls, or .ppt in their parent applications. So, before you uninstall Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, make sure that you have another way of opening those files if you need them.

Uninstall Microsoft Office From Mac

That could be another application that supports those file formats or another computer that has Office installed on it. If that’s not possible, you should open each file in Office and export it in a format that can be read in other applications, such as .rtf for Word documents. Don’t uninstall anything until you have made sure you will still be able to read and edit your files.

When you uninstall Outlook on your Mac, you will also remove all of its data, including email messages and attachments. If you use an IMAP server or an account like iCloud or Gmail, there’s nothing to worry about, your messages and attachments will still be on the server. However, if you have downloaded messages and attachments and deleted them from the mail server, or if you use a POP3 mail server, you should backup up all your messages and attachments before you uninstall Outlook. You can do this by exporting messages from Outlook in mbox format. You should also consider making a copy of the Containers folder described below, just in case.

Before you go ahead and attempt the manual uninstallation described below, there is another, much easier way. CleanMyMac X allows you to uninstall Office apps, or any other app, with just a couple of clicks, using its uninstaller tool. Here’s how it works:

  1. Download and launch CleanMyMac X — get a free version here
  2. Choose the Uninstaller tool from the sidebar.
  3. In the window on the right, check the box next to the Office apps (Word, Excel, etc) you want to uninstall.
  4. Press Uninstall

CleanMyMac X now removes not just the apps themselves, but all the associated junk files, saving you a huge amount of time and effort.

Uninstall office 2011 for mac

You can now check whether there are any leftover files.

  1. Go to the Uninstaller tool in CleanMyMac X.
  2. Click on Leftovers.
  3. If there are any files listed, check the box next to them and press Uninstall.

How to uninstall Office 365 on Mac

To uninstall Office 365, you need to uninstall each app and depending on which version of Office you are using, the process is slightly different.

Uninstall Office 2011

  1. Navigate to your Applications folder.
  2. Select Microsoft Excel
  3. Hold down the Command key and select Outlook, Powerpoint, and Word.
  4. Drag them all to the Trash and empty it.

This will uninstall Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook from your Mac.

Uninstall Office 365 2016

Uninstalling Office 2016 is more complicated than uninstalling the 2011 version, because you need to locate files in several different folders and move them to the Trash.

  1. Go to your Applications folder and select Microsoft Excel.
  2. Hold down the Command key and click on the following apps: OneNote; Outlook; PowerPoint; Word; One Drive.
  3. With all those apps selected, drag them to the Trash or Control-click on one of the apps and choose Move to Trash from the menu.
  4. In the Finder, click on the Go menu and choose Go to Folder, or press Command+Shift+G.
  5. In the box that opens, type: ~/Library and press Go.
  6. Locate the Containers folder and open it.
  7. Locate each of the folders listed below and drag them to the Trash (some of them may not be present)
    com.microsoft.errorreporting
    com.microsoft.Excel
    com.microsoft.netlib.shipassertprocess
    com.microsoft.Office365ServiceV2
    com.microsoft.Outlook
    com.microsoft.Powerpoint
    com.microsoft.RMS-XPCService
    com.microsoft.Word
    com.microsoft.onenote.mac
  8. Click the back arrow in the Finder window to go back to ~/Library and open the Group Containers folder.
  9. Locate the folders below and move them to the Trash (again, some may not be present).
    UBF8T346G9.ms
    UBF8T346G9.Office
    UBF8T346G9.OfficeOsfWebHost
  10. Empty the Trash
  11. If any Office icons are in the Dock, right-click on them and choose Options>Remove from Dock.
  12. Restart your Mac
Uninstall

You have now uninstalled Office 2016 from your Mac.

If your reason for uninstalling Office from your Mac is to save space, consider using CleanMyMac X to get rid of junk files before you uninstall. CleanMyMac X is an expert at getting rid of files you didn’t even know were there and can recover tens of gigabytes of disk space without having to uninstall anything.

If your reason for uninstalling Office from your Mac is to save space, consider using CleanMyMac X to get rid of junk files before you uninstall. CleanMyMac X is an expert at getting rid of files you didn’t even know were there and can recover tens of gigabytes of disk space without having to uninstall anything.

Uninstalling Microsoft Office is straightforward if you are using Office 2011. But Office 2016 is much more complicated to get rid of. There is no official uninstaller, so you have to track down files and folders manually and drag them to the Trash. A much easier solution is to use the CleanMyMac X’s Uninstaller tool which can uninstall applications with just a couple of clicks, removing all their associated files.





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