Installing Microsoft Office 2007 on Fedora 15

I needed to install Microsoft Office 2007 on my Fedora 15 installation, and my first step was to look for a tutorial that might help clear up any gotchas before I hit them. Unfortunately, the closest I found was these two articles:

• HOW TO INSTALL MICROSOFT OFFICE 2007 IN UBUNTU (UNDER WINE)
• How To Install Microsoft Office 2007 In Ubuntu 9.04

So, my thought was to create my own how to.  Instead, I think I have created more of a how NOT to!  By the time I was done with all of this, it didn’t work.  So, don’t bother with this article if you are trying to figure out how to make it work.  If you are looking on something to develop to make the world better for Linux users, look no more.  We need help!

Installing Wine

The first step I took in trying to get Office working was obviously installing Wine.  Previously, I had used PlayOnLinux with Ubuntu.  It did a decent job of getting all of the prerequisites working.  Since that wasn’t in the repository, I thought that I would try without it.  So, just installed plain Wine.

I used yumex:

Note:  I learned later that I need to install the 32-bit version.  I think probably the installing the 64-bit version as this screenshot shows was causing my problems.  I do have the 64-bit version of Fedora 15 installed though.

It installed about 30Mb of dependencies when it installed:

For me, this installed Wine version 1.3.24:

Configuring Wine

Next, I went into the Wine Configuration screen. Supposedly, you can find this in Gnome Classic under: Applications > Wine > Configure Wine. For me, I just searched for Wine in the Gnome Shell Applications pane:

Once I opened the Configuration, it asked me if I wanted to install Gecko. I said yes (although, I later learned that clicking yes is pointless):

It attempted to download and install gecko:

When, it was done, it asked me again to install Gecko. I just closed all of the configuration windows and reopened the Wine configuration tool again. It didn’t ask me the second time, and I made sure the version was set to Windows XP:

Installing Office

Next, I put in my Office CD and ran the Setup.exe using Wine:

The first question it asked was the Product key. I keep that handy so that I can reenter each time I reinstall Linux.

Next, I had to agree to the license:

Finally, click the install button to install the software:

It takes a few minutes to install…

When it was done, I closed the installer:

After closing the installer, I reopened Wine Configuration tool. Then, I went to the Library tab and added the riched20.dll in the “New override for library” box. After you click Add, you can click the Edit button and change it to “Native(Windows)”.

Now, I see the icons under Other:

First Installer

To start, I tried Word first. It is the program I need the most. On the first run, it asked for my name and Initials:

Next, it went through a log configuration process a couple of times:

I received this error message:

After clicking OK, it let me proceed to the activation window:

I chose the over the Internet method, and I was quickly able to complete that:

After clicking the menu button in Word, I got the Privacy Options, which I just accepted the defaults:

I chose the option to keep the installation up to date:

That didn’t work so well!

When closing, I received this error message (I think this is probably the key to all of it):

Winetricks

After all this, I still couldn’t open a Power Point Presentation. Power Point would open, no problem, but I couldn’t open a file with it. So, I decided to attempt to install gecko since I had run into issues with it earlier.

Unfortunately, no winetricks RPM exists in the repository, but the Wiki has some nice installation instructions.

First, I installed cabextract:

Then, I used these commands to download winetricks. Note that this assumes you already have a bin directory in your home.

wget -O ~/bin/winetricks http://kegel.com/wine/winetricks
chmod u+x ~/bin/winetricks
winetricks

Once, winetricks was running, I chose to “Select the default wineprefix”:

Next, I chose to “Install a Windows DLL or component”:

I selected: allcodecs, gecko, ie8, msxml6, msxml4, riched20, riched30, and winhttp. To be honest, I was just guessing and trying to get as many of the components as I thought it might remotely need.

During the install, I received this error:
“vcrun2008 install completed, but installed file /home/skp/.wine/dosdevices/c:/windows/winsxs/x86_Microsoft.VC90.MFC_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_9.0.30729.6161_x-ww_028bc148/mfc90.dll not found”

That still didn’t work so, I went back to one of the tutorials and found another command to try:

winetricks corefonts tahoma vcrun2005sp1 wsh56js

I had to accept this agreement:

I also had to say yes to the Windows Script 5.6.

And, I had to accept the license for that:

It let me know it was done installing:

After all that, it still would not work!  I think I have it working, so stay tuned…