OFF97: How to Obtain and Install MS Office 97 SR-1

Microsoft Office 97 SR-1 includes a number of updates for each program in Microsoft Office 97. This article contains information about how to obtain and install Office 97 SR-1.

To obtain the patch, visit the following Microsoft World Wide Web site: Note After you install SR-1, you can also install the Microsoft Office 97 SR-2 Patch, which contains additional fixes. The SR-2 Patch requires that you first install SR-1. For more information about Microsoft Office 97 Service Release 2 (SR-2), please click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Important Microsoft Office 97 Service Release CD-ROMs and replacement CD-ROMs are no longer available from Microsoft. For additional information about how to obtain the Microsoft Office 97 Service Release 1 (SR-1) and Microsoft Office 97 Service Release 2 (SR-2), click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Important Note to OEM Customers

If you have an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) copy of Microsoft Office 97, you cannot order disks from the Microsoft Order Desk or from the Microsoft Web site. However, you can download the patch from the Microsoft Web site or contact your OEM to see if they have Microsoft Office 97 SR-1.

To determine if you have an OEM copy of Microsoft Office 97, start any of the programs included in Microsoft Office 97 and click About on the Help menu in the program. If the Product ID (PID) includes the letters "OEM," you cannot order Microsoft Office 97 SR-1 floppy disks or compact discs from Microsoft.

Items shown below that are NOT available to customers with OEM copies of Microsoft Office 97 are marked with an asterisk in parentheses (*).

Limitations of Updating Office 97 with the Patch

You can use the downloadable patch to update configurations installed from the following sources:

• Microsoft Office 97 Professional Edition for Windows (CD and floppy disks)
• Microsoft Office 97 Standard Edition for Windows (CD and floppy disks)
• Microsoft Office 97 Small Business Edition for Windows (CD and floppy disks)
• Microsoft Excel 97 for Windows (CD and floppy disks)
• Microsoft Word 97 for Windows (CD and floppy disks)
• Microsoft PowerPoint 97 for Windows (CDc and floppy disks)
• Microsoft Access 97 (CD and floppy disks)
• Microsoft Outlook (CD and floppy disks)

You cannot use the patch to update the following installations of Office 97:

• Administrative installations
  
  To update an administrative installation, you must create a new administrative installation point by using the SR-2 Replacement CD. When you run Setup from this version of Office, use the /a switch with the Setup command again, for example, type the following:
  setup /a
• Run From CD-ROM installations
  
  To prevent problems that may occur because of mismatched dynamic link library (DLL) files, you cannot use the patch to update a Run From CD installation. If you attempt to update this kind of installation by using the patch, the following error message appears:
  Microsoft Office 97 SR-1 has detected that office is running from a CDROM drive...cannot continue.
• Run From Network Server installations
  
  Because you cannot use the patch to update an administrative installation, you cannot update a Run From Network Server installation. If you attempt to update this kind of installation by using the patch, the following error message appears:
  You are running from a network drive. SR-1 Patch does not support this... aborting.
• Installations in which shared programs are stored on a network server
  
  You cannot use the patch to update a post-administrative installation in which you installed Office 97 from a network server, and the shared programs run from the network server. However, you can use the patch to update this kind of installation if the shared programs run on the local computer.

Note When you use the patch, the updating process may not be completed on computers running some configurations of Microsoft Windows NT 4.0. For the patch to work successfully, Service Pack 2 or later must be installed on a computer running Windows NT 4.0. Additionally, if NT File System (NTFS) is being used, the user must have administrative privileges to the computer.

For additional information problems that you may experience when you install SR-1, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: