Recently Microsoft has came up with updates that caused many users to get an error message says “Microsoft Office Word has not been installed for the current user. Please run setup to install the application.” when you try to run it. After clicking the OK button, Microsoft Word closes. You’ll be getting the same error message if you try to run any of the other office components such as Excel, Publisher, Access, Outlook and etc… The worst part is uninstalling and reinstalling wouldn’t help to fix this problem.
Microsoft Office Word has not been installed for the current user. Please run setup to install the application
There’s a Microsoft KnowledgeBase on this issue and the solution is to give EVERYONE full control of the Opa11.dat file. Unfortunately this solution would only help to fix the problem when the non-administrative user accounts on the computer do not have permission to modify specific files that are used by the Office 2003 Setup program or the Office XP Setup program.

Another reason why this problem occur is you have using a pirated version of Microsoft Office and you’ve recently installed the latest updates. Some people are able to resolve this issue by using system restore but here’s a simpler way to fix this problem.

The file that is causing this error is MSO.DLL located at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE11 for Office 2003 and C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE12 for Office 2007. Somehow Microsoft has updated this file to give you this error message when it detects a pirated copy of Office that is installed on your computer. When you try to run a repair or even uninstallation, the setup wouldn’t touch the MSO.DLL file at all. That is why after repairing / uninstallation, you’ll still get the same error.

The simple solution is to search for the file MSO.DLL in your computer and copy the older MSO.DLL file replacing the current one in Program Files. I found two versions of MSO.DLL in C:\WINDOWS\Installer\$PatchCache$\Managed\…..
Replace Office MSO.dll file
If you can’t find the other backed up MSO.DLL file in your computer, you can simple delete the current MSO.DLL file from Program Files and then do a repair or reinstallation of Microsoft Office 2003 or 2007. That would restore the older version of MSL.DLL from the installation CD.

Pirating a software is bad, but I wonder since when Microsoft started to teach pirates a lesson by giving such annoyance to some users who may not even realize that they have a pirated version of Office installed by a computer shop?

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