Curious about Repair

[fumei]

Just a question.

I read very often on other forums about people having to try using Repair - be it successfully or not.

In all my years of using Office, I have NEVER had to try and use Repair. Ever.

Is this unusual? What is the rate of people needing to try Repair? I am just curious.

And, if you have used Repair, how well did it work to fix whatever problem you had?

[Frosty]

You're talking about the application repair, not the document open & repair, right?

I've never found the various office repair functions useful, and I have tried them sporadically over the years (although mostly for outlook).

Words Open & Repair feature has been hugely useful at times, however.

[fumei]

Yes, I was in fact thinking abgout application repair.

[macropod]

Given the # of Word users, the frequency with which repairs are required is pretty low. And some of the repair recommendations are probably being made by people who don't understand the issues at hand - rather like those that recommend reinstalling. Repairs won't fix template, display or printer driver problems, for example.

FWIW, reinstalling rarely achieves anything a repair won't (inlcuding all of the aforementioned).

I suspect that, as OSs have become more robust and the apps themselves have gotten better, the (already infrequent) need for repairs has declined.

[fumei]

This is something I have been wondering. I read about all these reinstalls and it seems over the top.

[Frosty]

I agree. I haven't encountered a problem in Word I can't solve in some fashion without needing to reinstall/repair. If wiping out normal.dot, all addins and the toolbar/data regkeys can't fix the problem, then I haven't encountered it.