howto: remove office for mac residue after the test drive expires
in the style of a booyaa.org handy hint/mini-hack/how to, here is a little thing i found out this weekend.
my newish iBook shipped with tiger - ggrrrr ;) - plus office for mac. i'm very much not a fan of microsoft but the advantages of being able to open documents, spreadsheets, powerpoint slides etc from work meant i decided to go with the test drive option and accept the install prompt. as it turned out, i only used the thing about three times before my test drive (30 days, i believe) was up. i got a bit annoyed how it kept reminding me to buy the package and uninstalled as per instructions. months down the line and every time i try to open a file with an office equivalent (mostly spreadsheets) it tells me that i need to buy the office for mac package. why? i uninstalled it, for pete's sake.
worse was to come, for the context (right-click) menu, where you can choose what program to open a file with, same as in windows, had all the office for mac programs set as default, an option which i never chose nor was i ever presented with an option in fact. i hate that soooo much. who gave them the right to make that decision? i got so angry when i saw it. it's like using windows all over again, with someone else - ie: microsoft - making decisions cos it thinks it knows best. well think again, buddy. it's my computer. i paid good money for it. keep your hands and your insidious, patronising practices well away from it.
sorry, i'll calm down now.
so what came about was this. i decided to find out how to clear the context menu. there was also a nagging doubt about the persistence of the items, plus the images of files used the office for mac icons. surely if it's been uninstalled these things should be in the trash?
turns out, thanks to some googling but mostly to the e2 iNode usergroup, that all the folders and the installer are still in my library. so i disposed of them all and emptied the trash. voila! gone! my default for spreadsheets is now apple works (though that's a bit clunky and unsexy and i'm not at all sure what happened there. did someone not bother to bring it into the 21st century?) and not a sign of the evil office for mac icons anywhere.
and they all lived happily ever after...
