Ubuntu 9.10 Installing Microsoft Office 2007… November 8th, 2009
Linux is growing in popularity more and more with every year that passes, in recent years this has been made ever more public with the Ubuntu distributions which are now real Windows alternatives for the average end user. Just as with Mac sofware, Ubuntu comes ‘out of the box’ with everything you could possibly need to go about your day to day business; best of all everything is essentially free thanks to its open source underpinnings.
However there are drawbacks.
Ubuntu comes bundled with OpenOffice, a Microsoft Office alternative from Sun. It works really well; giving you all the features you have come to expect from using Office on Windows, but – and here’s the real killer – even though it has the same functionability, it looks different, acts different and has different native file formats. This alone is enough for a lot of people not to give Ubuntu or other Linux distributions a try, afterall, why would you want to switch to another OS when you have Windows installed already, do all of your work in Office and are familiar with both. Microsoft Office not being compatible with Ubuntu is a real problem.
As more and more Linux distributions have been developed and their popularity has increased, so has the need for a stable solution to using Office in a Linux environment, it’s been very ‘messy’ but a lot of people have had varying success using Wine. Wine let’s you run Windows software in a Linux environment which when it works, works great. However, Office had always been one of those annoyances that doesn’t seem to work under Wine as it should. Fortunately though, Wine has been improved over the years and now their is a solution.
For the purposes of this guide, I am using the latest version of Ubuntu, Wine and Microsoft Office; Ubuntu 9.10, Wine 1.1.32 beta and Microsoft Office 2007.
So, to get Office working on Ubuntu, read on.
Firstly, we need to make sure that all previous versions of Wine are uninstalled. Previous versions of Wine suffered from a regression issue and will not work with Office 2007 so:
- Click on System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager
- In Synaptic Package Manager, type Wine in the search field and highlight any existing instances of Wine which are installed on your system, making sure to choose Mark for Complete Removal and then Apply
- We now need to remove the exiting .wine folder by navigating to Places > Home Folder. You’ll need to press CTRL+H to unhide the .wine folder so that you can delete it
Next, we need to install the latest version of Wine, but before doing so it won’t hurt to give your machine a restart. Once you’ve done this, do the following:
- Download the latest version of Wine from http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/archive/index.html, I used v1.1.32 beta. When the popup box appears, choose to Open with Gdebi package Installer. Once the package begins installing, you will get a warning dialogue. Acknowledge this and continue through the install process
We can now install Microsoft Office 2007, so pop the installation disc into the drive and wait for the system to mount it:
- Navigate to the installer by going to Places > Office12 and right click setup.exe chosing Open with Wine Windows Program Loader
- Now follow the installation process as if it were a Windows installtion [screenshot], but choosing a custom installation and choosing the program options you’ll need [screenshot]. Note: Unfortunately, not all of the office applications seem to work correctly under Ubuntu (or Linux generally) so I’d recommend just installing Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Access and Outlook have known issues.
Once Office has finished installing [screenshot], we need to install winetricks which is a useful tool to use some common workarounds to some of the deficiencies in Wine:
- Open your Terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and type:
sudo wget www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks[screenshot] - Next, install cabextract in order to be able to extract the contents of Microsoft cabinet files. To do this, type the following:
sudo apt–get install cabextract[screenshot] - Next we need to install MS core fonts, Visual C++, MS scripting and Jscript, type the following:
sh winetricks corefonts tahoma vcrun2005spl wsh56js
The next stage is to confgure Wine itself:
- As we already have a Terminal window open, type:
winecfg[screenshot] - On the Libraries tab, add 2 new variables:
riched20
usp10 - Once you have done this [screenshot], highlight or click riched20 and click Edit, change to Native Windows then Apply and OK
Finally, we can now test Office, navigate to Word; Applications > Wine > Programs > Microsoft Office and click the launcher for Word. You may need to restart your machine in order for the Microsoft Office program group to appear in the menu. When Word launches, you’ll need to activate as normal and, importantly, choose not to use Microsoft updates [screenshot] (see note below).
Notes: There are some limitations, the most noteworthy of which is that this may not work correctly if you install using media with an SP already applied, Office under Wine will not work with any of the Microsoft Service Packs and/or Microsoft Update.
The ‘proof is in the pudding’ as they say, heres some screenshots [Word Excel PowerPoint]. Enjoy!
If you find this guide useful, please leave a comment.
This entry was posted on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 16:03 and is filed under Blah, Linux, Microsoft, Office 2007, Technology Related, Ubuntu. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
28 Responses
Ubuntu 9.10 Installing Microsoft Office 2007… | Mike Southby Says:
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Ubuntu 9.10 Installing Microsoft Office 2007… | Mike Southby | Just linux！ Says:
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Arturo Says:
I get a file not found error when opening some files via nautilus, though I can open them through word directly. Any ideas as to what could be happening? TIA!
Chris Stevenson Says:
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I spent the better part of the day trying to use PlayonLinux. Despite the installation process being error free, Office would not function. One time through your direction and it’s working like a charm!
Thanks again!!
clhound Says:
i found newest edition of microsoft office 2010, at http://techwor.com/ it’s free for download now, does it supports Ubuntu?
Mike Says:
I have just started using the beta of Office 2010 myself so will give it a try in a week or 2, but, I suspect this will be a non-starter for the forseeable future; under the skin there will of course have been many changes which need to be thought out in terms of interoperability with WINE.
Watch this space but it may take some time!
For those that are interested, the official download site for the new beta if you want to have a play is http://www.microsoft.com/office2010/
PallibA Says:
Thank you for this guide, easy to complete. The only thing I had problem with was this line:
sudo apt –get install cabextract where is should be
sudo apt-get install cabextract
But thanks again :)
Mike Says:
Hey, thanks for the feedback.
Will double check and update!
Thanks.
Fuzzycat Says:
Mike,
Thanks for this guide…it is detailed and appears easy to follow, so I was thinking about trying it out. For work reasons, I would like to be able to use Microsoft Outlook 2007. Have you or anyone else had any experience with Outlook 2007 with Wine? I saw that the Wine rating for Outlook 2007 was poor…http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=34.
If I need to use Outlook 2007, would you recommend that I use VirtualBox instead, even though it will use more resources than Wine?
Again, appreciate you posting this guide for us!
Fuzzycat Says:
Mike,
In your guide you’ve noted that Outlook 2007 has known issues with Wine, but appreciate your thoughts about the best way for an Ubuntu 9.10 user to access Outlook 2007 in any event…
Thanks-
Mike Says:
Hi, no unfortunately Outlook does not seem to want to play ball with Ubuntu, there are some noteworthy sites where people have managed to get it working but only in a limited capacity – certainly not to the standard you’d be able to use in a production environment.
I haven’t tried too much to see if I can get it to work as I use Windows 7 too and run Outlook there so have no real need to ‘need’ a fix, I will of course post further if I have any thoughts or manage to find a fix when I get time to have a further play.
Taking your first point about using Outlook within VirtualBox; I’m assuming that you would be using VirtualBox in a Windows environment? If so, for simplicity why not run Outlook for there? I appriciate that ultimately you probably want 100% functionability from Ubuntu but not sure thats feasable just yet.
Muudi Says:
very easy to follow instruction, I have tried many different instruction but this one is far better and very easy to follow
many thanks you rock
Fuzzycat Says:
Mike,
Thanks for your response…I was trying to determine if there was a way I didn’t know about to use Outlook without need for a Windows OS. But I agree with your thoughts…as long as I need Outlook, for now I am tied to a Windows OS. I’ll continue to dual boot and watch for improvements to Wine on Outlook!
Many thanks…Fuzzy
M.R.Wellman Says:
I was using the ‘03 version of office and was glad to update to ‘07. There are a lot more helpful things and it is easy to use. Easy location of tabs at top and I just enjoy using it.
Ubuntu 9.10 Installing Microsoft Office 2010 Beta… | Mike Southby Says:
[...] Ubuntu 9.10 Installing Microsoft Office 2007… [...]
serious96 Says:
Mike,
I already follow all your guide, and it was working well with Wprd and Excel, but somehow, PowePoint can’t start, right after splash screen, there was nothing. Is there somtehing wrong???
MWilliams Says:
I followed this guide step by step with no problems at all. This guide is excellent. I am a complete beginner and have only just install Ubuntu today. This guide has helped me install Office 2007 successfully. Thanks
Steve Says:
thanks for your help, Mike.
I works great. Cheers, Steve from Switzerland
S.R.K. Says:
I installed this today (2010-01-29) and everything went perfectly. I’m running Ubuntu 9.10 on my Dell Inspiron 9.10. I tried a few other directions using Wine and even PlayOnLinux that said they worked, but this is the first that worked exactly as described. Thank you so much for your help. I am not a Microsoft fan in general, but I love Office 2007.
sachin Joshi Says:
I followed your instructions and I have wine 1.2 installed on my ubuntu 9.10 machine. After completing all prerequsite (with winetricks) installation when I run the setup.exe of office 2007 i get an error window that “this can be caused by a problem in the program or deficiency in wine”
what could I be missing please help.
Mike Says:
Yes, Outlook is compatible although not fully – it really depends on what functionability you are after. Personally, I deem it non compatible based on the fact it will not do everything I expect based on how it works under Windows. Word, Excel etc do however…
Josh Says:
This guide works great! I was trying PlayOnLinux, and it wasn’t working because it was automatically downloading a version of Wine that was too old. This method worked flawlessly. Thanks so much!
Hadi Says:
Thank you very much for this tutorial. Actually, it works properly in my laptop.
