Microsoft insisted on bringing the joys of the windows registry to the mac, instead of recoding their mac port of office to use a normal mac preferences system. As a result, there's a ~150-500k file on your computer that is office's registry. If you delete the file, it "grows back" at about 56k and nothing will work right until you do something about it. Usually office apps crash on launch, or will hang during startup.
And same as on windows, it can get corrupted and cause severe malfunctions. And same as on windows, clean reinstallation is the easiest way to fix it.
When you have to support a few hundred macs with office on them, you quickly learn to keep a backup copy of the few variations on that file. Office problem? Replace the registry file from backup. Problem fixed. Much quicker and easier than reimaging the workstation.
iirc it's the "Microsoft Registration Database", somewhere in the Office folder. The file name and path vary with office versions. Except when they don't (like 2008 to 2011) and then all hell breaks loose when you try to have both apps installed at the same time.
Currently I find mine in ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/OLE Registration Database 11
Last edited by Virtual1; 05/26/13 07:45 PM.