How to reinstall an app?

I am glad that MAS is running fine for you but there are five other people in this thread (including me) for whom there is a problem with an App showing as Installed and that cannot be downloaded/reinstalled again after it has most definitely been removed.

I agree 5 in millions is not many but it may indicate there is a problem. Two of us have been in direct contact with MAS support and have not received an answer that works.

So far, nobody here has come up with a working solution.

I am trying to figure what irritated me about your initial reply and looking back, it was this:

"In spite of the fact that the MAS works pretty flawlessly for millions of us. "

If you are not a native speaker, perhaps you did not mean to imply what it says to a native reader (that the original enquirer does not have any idea what they are talking about because it works for millions of others). By instantly trying to invalidate someone's observation you are calling them a liar—bound to make people angry.

Anyhow, enough.

No solutions here it seems.

I'm sorry that you took offense to that comment. However, it means what it means. There are millions of people who don't experience the problem you are seeing. That tends to imply something is causing your system to behave like it does, not some inherent problem in the MAS.

Some people have suggested you try in another account, yet I don't see any response from you as to whether that worked or not. I would also suggest you try on another Mac, if you have access to one, which may give an indication that it might be something wrong with your MAS account.

Hi Barney,

Check his comment at Jul 15, 2011 7:21 PM, 2nd half of the 3rd paragraph were he says he has tried most standard troubleshooting steps. Since he can duplicate it in other accounts and on various Macs using both Snow and Lion, maybe it is his account.

That's what I would think, also. I'm not sure we could do anything, in that case. You would have to contact the Mac App Store support.

Thanks for keeping at it despite my boorish bad temper yesterday—a night of sleep in airconditioning and thinking on it more rationally this morning came up with the answer.

I got the clue from the previous comment about check the Trash. On all my systems, I keep a daily bootable backup cloned automatically every day. When this problem started after 10.6.8 updates, I stopped the cloning but did not disconnect the drive. I then deleted the App from the boot drive following the developer's instructions (but not from the clone).

What is happening is that when you log-in to MAS, it seems to be checking not just the boot drive for the presence of a previously download App but all connected drives! Hence because the clone still has a copy of the damaged App, the App Store was finding it and telling me it was "Installed." It was happening on all Macs because all have attached cloned drives.

The solution was simple, disconnect the clone and log onto MAS and then the option to install reappears again.

I don't know if checking all drives and not just the boot drive for installed Apps is the expected behavior for App Store or a bug but I would have thought MAS support would have known and could have mentioned it after two emails.

Anyhow, if this happens to others, it might be the solution.

Again, apologies for bad temper—I was mostly angry with the long wait (3 days in the first place and not within 24 hours as Apple states) and useless boilerplate answers from MAS support.

thanks for that! that worked indeed.

nipper123 wrote:

What is happening is that when you log-in to MAS, it seems to be checking not just the boot drive for the presence of a previously download App but all connected drives! Hence because the clone still has a copy of the damaged App, the App Store was finding it and telling me it was "Installed." It was happening on all Macs because all have attached cloned drives.

The solution was simple, disconnect the clone and log onto MAS and then the option to install reappears again.

For clarification...

I have a MacBook Pro as my main Mac,

it runs 10.6 from the Internal HDD

and I'll call that drive 'MacHD.'

I also have an external drive partitioned

to boot 10.6 - call that 'Snow,'

and also 10.7 - call that 'Lion.'

When I boot to either Snow or Lion

MAS states all the apps are installed

when - being clean OS installs - they are not.

Do I understand you correctly in that

booting to either Snow or Lion will continue

to show all various apps as installed

since they are visible on the MacHD?

Yes.

If you have TimeMachine working or another attached Drive; either or which HAS the application on it, it will show up as "Installed" on MAS.

Dismount any attached External or Internal drives that may have the Application. (TimeMachine WILL restore the App. But.... if you really need to reinstall, dismount external/additional drives)

MAS will NOW show that the Application is available for download.

If it requires payment, after all this, you will need to stop and NOT do the download, and fight it out with Apple Customer Service.

I would like to put my $.02 in. I had damaged/deleted apps in my itunes folder and could not figure out how to redownload them. The app had the exclamation point showing that the file did not exist, but there was no option in the store to redownload. It only told me that they were downloaded. The solution I found was that I had to go to itunes, right click on the app and choose delete. I was then able to go back to the itunes store, then app store, go to purchased, and now the app shows as available to download again.

If you are using Time Machine, you can just go back to a time when the app you lost was there. Then just choose that app and click on "restore." The app will be back just as it was 🙂

i have this question too. 欧路词典 is deleted ,but app store show installed, so i can't reinstall.

how can you do it now?

now i find my other volume of mountain lion have EuDic Free.app ,

then i copy it to volume of lion , the eudic can be opened.

nipper123 wrote:

The solution was simple, disconnect the clone and log onto MAS and then the option to install reappears again.

Thank you. This solved my problem. Running 10.8 on clone drive. I uninstalled iMovie by opening Launchpad. Click and hold on the iMovie app. Hit the 'X' to 'uninstall'. Eject clone drive. Restart App Store. 'Install' button is active. Reinstall iMovie. Profit.