I de-installed microsoft office suite but microsoft auto update keeps coming

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alberti-nl Author

Level 1

36 points

I de-installed microsoft office suite but microsoft auto update keeps coming

My circumstances are the following:

I have Microsoft Office for myself. It is as far as I know a single license.
I passed on my iMac 2017 to my wife; cleaned it, and installed from her back-up image. It should be a clean install.

However, somehow the Microsoft updater keeps on bogging her. How on earth does it come back as a phantom?

I deleted everything associated with MAU, associated with Microsoft etc.

Every few weeks however it comes back. If I kill the process, it comes back. On After some time her iMac will slow down.

And Microsoft is not supportive: if I try to log on to their support, the first time i got their page, [and a phone number] but after that I got access denied, of all things. For your fun I add that . .

OK:

The programs that keep coming back are the Microsoft Auto Update and the Microsoft updater-assistant. If I kill them, they are back in a minute or so. If I delete om.microsoft.autoupdate2, it comes back.

So now I did a search again & deleted again com.microsoft.autoupdate2, com.microsoft.autoupdate.fba and two plists, and com.microsoft.autoupdate. MERP.params.txt

Right now I am crossing my fingers.

But I'm sure there are better suggestions.

below some screen grabs. . .

iMac 21.5″ 4K, macOS 12.6

Posted on May 22, 2023 9:33 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

alberti-nl Author

Level 1

36 points

May 23, 2023 2:23 AM in response to VikingOSX

Thanks Viking. I looked there and somehow also found a link on the Microsoft Support page, to execute a de-install Python script on GitHub: 'Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac Removal Tool, VERSION=1.6', but alas, it is just a script text, not a .zip file that can be navigated as the instructions tell. I found a link: a page to manually remove Microsoft Office 2011.

there is a subsection to 'Manual removal of Office for Mac 2011' with detailed instructions in 6 steps.
I was surprised to find so many files as per instructions; even files I had found with the 'find' option and deleted before. They just came back behind my back.

Now it seems that everything is finished as required; the pop-up of the microsoft auto update did not re-appear after the last update.

One addition to the list: Also look in preferences, where there is a Microsoft folder, and delete that (in my case, with Office 2009 and 2011 information), after step 5:

While I was restarting after step 3 -, i got a panicky message that Microsoft detected a problem (reminds me of the HAL computer that finds out it is being aborted) but com'on Microsoft, you stopped support.

And the list of com.microsoft I found with these instructions (and that a search had not revealed yesterday), that I also now deleted in toto:

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,126 points

May 22, 2023 10:14 AM in response to alberti-nl

Did you use the Microsoft office on installer? That should’ve remove the auto update.

The launchd property list for Microsoft Autoupdate is in the LaunchAgents folder of the library folder

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Answer 3

alberti-nl Author

Level 1

36 points

May 23, 2023 12:18 AM in response to Barney-15E

Thanks.

Microsoft Office 2011 was uninstalled with the drag and drop method on her old iMac 2012, after support ended, and would not work under High Sierra; and gave no problems for some time untill I migrated het to her "new" iMac 2017 which otherwise works great for her.

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