Known issues for installation of Office 2011

For general product activation and product key questions and answers, please see this Microsoft Support article.

For help troubleshooting an invalid product key error when attempting to activate Office for Mac 2011, please see this Microsoft Support article.

For help finding or replacing your Office 2011 product key, please see this Microsoft Support article.

For help troubleshooting the error "the product key has been used the maximum number of times permitted," please see this Microsoft Support article.

In OS X Mountain Lion, there is a new security feature called GateKeeper that is designed to prevent the installation of applications that have been downloaded through a browser. If your computer is running OS X Mountain Lion and you want to update Office 2011, you have two choices for installing Office for Mac updates.

Microsoft AutoUpdate for Mac Installation

Manual Installation

If you use Apple Remote Desktop to install Office for Mac 2011 on another computer on your network, Dock icons are not installed.

Fonts that are replaced by Office Installer are moved to either the /Library/Fonts Disabled folder or the /Users/username/Library/Fonts Disabled folder so that you can save them or restore them, if necessary.

Office Installer makes changes to fonts, and if you have an earlier version of Office on your computer, the Office Installer replaces old Office fonts with new fonts. If any open application is using a font that is replaced by the Office Installer, that application could become unstable or display information incorrectly.

If you encounter these issues, quit and then restart the application. If quitting and restarting the application does not resolve the issue, restart the computer.

To change Office Installer settings so that Office Installer doesn't install new fonts, do the following:

Office Installer installs Office for Mac 2011 in the Applications folder. If you move the Microsoft Office 2011 folder to another location on your computer, or if you rename or modify any of the files in the Microsoft Office 2011 folder, you cannot install product updates. To correct this issue so that you can install product updates, drag the Microsoft Office 2011 folder to the Trash, and then reinstall Office 2011 from your original installation disk.

If you do a custom installation of Office for Mac, and you choose not to install Visual Basic for Applications, then wizards for Word, such as the Label Wizard, will not open when you select them in the Word Document Gallery. To work around the issue, perform a custom installation again, and make sure that the application that you want and the Visual Basic for Applications check box are selected. After installation, try to open the wizard again.

If you are installing a version of Office for Mac 2011 that was downloaded from a Web site, you might see a message during installation that warns you about opening the “quit_apps” application. The quit_apps application is a safe component of the Office for Mac 2011 installer, so you can click Open to continue the installation.