Microsoft Service Pack Uninstall Tool for the 2007 Office suite
Updated: March 5, 2012
Applies To: Office Resource Kit
This Office product will reach end of support on October 10, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see , Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.
Topic Last Modified: 2016-11-14
In this article:
Overview
Command-line options
How to uninstall Service Pack 2 or Service Pack 3
Results
Troubleshooting
Known issues
The 2007 Microsoft Office system Service Pack (SP) 2 release provides a new command-line tool, Microsoft Service Pack Uninstall Tool for the 2007 Microsoft Office Suite (or 2007 Office SP Uninstall Tool), which allows administrators and advanced users to remove Service Pack 2 and Service Pack 3 for Office client products without uninstalling the entire product. Previously, the only way to remove an Office service pack was to completely uninstall the product; it was not possible to uninstall a service pack. The 2007 Office SP Uninstall Tool is available only as a separate download from the Microsoft Download Center at The Microsoft Service Pack Uninstall Tool for the 2007 Microsoft Office Suite (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=144518). The tool is not part of the SP2 download itself.
Overview
The 2007 Office SP Uninstall Tool is contained in a package that is named Office2007SPUninstall.exe, which is a self-extracting executable file. The tool itself is a single file that is named OARPMan.exe. There is no installation for the tool. OARPMan.exe, the Microsoft Software License Terms (previously known as End User Licensing Agreement or EULA), and the Readme.txt files are extracted to the location that users specify.
The uninstall command-line tool allows the removal of a service pack release, which is a collection of patches. The uninstall tool removes all patches in a given release. It does not uninstall per patch or per product. For example, if you have Microsoft Office Visio 2007 Service Pack 2, Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer Service Pack 2, and Microsoft Office Professional 2007 Service Pack 2 installed on a computer, the tool uninstalls all these patches at the same time because they are part of the same release. Because of the complexity of shared files and shared Windows Installer packages (MSI files), there is no support currently for uninstalling per-product service packs.
The 2007 Office SP Uninstall Tool provides the following capabilities:
Uninstalls client patches only. It does not uninstall server patches.
Uninstalls service pack patches only. It does not uninstall hotfixes or public updates.
Uninstalls Service Pack 2 and Service Pack 3 only. It does not uninstall Service Pack 1.
When 2007 Office system SP2 or SP3 is removed, the user's computer returns to its previous state. For example,
If you deploy the released version of the 2007 Office system, and 2007 Office system SP1, security patches, and 2007 Office system SP2, and then you uninstall SP2, the user's computer is returned to the 2007 Office system SP1 plus security patches.
If you deploy the released version of the 2007 Office system, and security patches, hotfixes, and 2007 Office system SP2, and then you uninstall 2007 Office system SP2, the user's computer is returned to the released version of the 2007 Office system plus security patches and hotfixes.
Note
You must be an administrator on the local computer to use the uninstall tool to remove a release. If you are using a computer that is running Windows Vista, you must run the tool from an administrator command prompt.
You must close all 2007 Office system applications before you begin to uninstall SP2 or SP3.
Command-line options
OARPMan.exe supports the command-line options shown in the following table.
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
/report |
Reports the list of installed patches that can be removed by the tool. The report contains the following items in this order:
Using the /log switch with the /report switch provides additional information in the log file that is not shown in the console window. The /report switch displays only patches that are part of releases that the tool can uninstall. For example, if Service Pack 1 has been installed, the tool does not display Service Pack 1 with /report, because it cannot be uninstalled by the tool. |
/remove <release> |
Removes from the system all patches marked with the specified release designation, for example, “O12SP2” or “O12SP13.” If the release parameter is not specified, or if it is typed incorrectly, Help is displayed. Remove displays the following items in this order:
Using the /log switch with the /remove switch provides additional information in the log file that is not shown in the console window. |
/log <file path> |
Creates a log for the OARPMan tool and copies the resulting MSI log files to the folder that contains the log. The <file path> parameter is required and the folder path that was specified must already exist. The OARPMan log includes success and failure messages, OARPMan errors, and any information that is displayed in the console window. If the <file path> parameter is not specified, Help is displayed. Using the /log switch with either the /report or /remove switches provides additional information in the log file that is not displayed in the console window. Using the /log switch with the /report switch provides the following additional information in the log that is not displayed in the console window:
Using the /log switch with the /remove switch provides the following additional information in the log that is not displayed in the console window:
|
/? -or- /help |
Describes the available commands. |
How to uninstall Service Pack 2 or Service Pack 3
To uninstall SP2 or SP3, perform the following tasks:
Download the 2007 SP Uninstall Tool and expand the package to a working directory.
Note
You must use a subfolder such as C:<subdirectory> to expand the tool. You cannot expand the tool into the root directory of the hard disk drive (for example, C:).
Open a command prompt and navigate to the location of the OARPMan.exe file.
To display the Help for information about the tool and available switches, type the following at the command prompt: oarpman /help.
To see a list of the patches that the tool uninstalls, type the following at the command prompt: oarpman /report /log c:\logfolder\logname.log.
The use of the /log switch is optional, but it provides additional information in the log file that is not displayed to the console window.
Users can see which patches are currently installed by looking at the console, or viewing the log file. The Release column indicates which releases are installed. For example, “O12SP2” or “012SP3.”
To remove Service Pack 2 or Service Pack 3 from the computer, type the following at the command prompt: oarpman /remove O12SP2 /log c:\logfolder\logname.log or oarpman /remove O12SP3 /log c:\logfolder\logname.log, depending on which service pack you want to uninstall.
Note
You cannot double-click oarpman.exe to run the uninstall tool. You must open a command prompt window as an administrator, and then run oarpman.exe as described in this section.
This begins removing the service pack release from the computer, creates an OARPMan log, and copies the MSI logs to the path that was specified with the /log switch. Uninstall status is displayed on the console window, and more detailed information is recorded in the log file if logging is enabled.
The time that is required to uninstall varies, depending on issues such as the number of products that are installed, the number of service pack updates installed, and the processor speed of the computer.
To verify that all releases have been removed, type the following at the command prompt: oarpman /report.
Results
The following table lists the possible results from uninstall.
| Scenario | Result#define | Console output | Return code |
|---|---|---|---|
Bad input |
ERROR_INVALID_PARAMETER |
help |
87 |
Report |
ERROR_SUCCESS |
The report |
0 |
Report |
ERROR_SUCCESS |
No uninstallable releases found. |
0 |
Remove |
ERROR_SUCCESS |
Uninstall successful. |
0 |
Remove |
ERROR_SUCCESS_REBOOT_REQUIRED |
Uninstall successful. Please reboot. |
3010 |
Remove |
ERROR_UNKNOWN_PROPERTY |
Release not found. |
1608 |
Remove |
ERROR_PATCH_REMOVAL_DISALLOWED |
This tool requires administrative permissions. |
1649 |
Remove |
ERROR_PATCH_PACKAGE_UNSUPPORTED |
The installed version of Windows Installer is not supported by this tool. |
1637 |
Remove |
1600-1699 Range of MSI error codes |
Uninstall failed. Check logs if logging enabled. |
|
Out of memory |
ERROR_OUTOFMEMORY |
An unexpected error was encountered. |
14 |
Bad log file |
Different errors might be returned depending on cause. |
Unable to create log file. Check path or file name. |
|
Unexpected error |
ERROR_GENERIC_COMMAND_FAILED |
An unexpected error was encountered. |
14109 |
Troubleshooting
The following table lists errors that might occur when you run the 2007 SP Uninstall Tool.
| Message | Description |
|---|---|
“The installed version of Windows Installer is not supported by this tool.” |
The tool requires the same version of Windows Installer (3.1 or later) required by Office for patching. You must run the tool from a computer that has the appropriate version of MSI. |
“Release not found.” |
You might have typed the release value incorrectly. Verify that you typed the release value as specified in the Release column of the tool’s report (oarpman /report). |
“Uninstall successful. Please reboot.” |
The updates have been installed. However, installation cannot complete until the computer is restarted. The likely cause of this is that some files that needed to be updated were in use while the tool was uninstalling patches. |
“Unable to create log file. Check path of file name.” |
To create the log, a valid, full path and file name must be specified with the /log switch. Verify that the path and file name are valid. |
“This tool requires administrative permissions.” |
You must be a local administrator to use the tool to remove a release. Check your permissions. If using Windows Vista, you must run from an administrator command prompt. |
“Uninstall failed. Check logs if logging enabled.” |
The tool failed to remove some or all of the patches in the specified release. Try running the report again (oarpman /report) and see if any service pack patches are still installed. If some patches remain, try removing the release again. |
Known issues
The following table lists known issues.
| Issue | Description and work around |
|---|---|
Uninstall might fail for the Chinese Hong Kong S.A.R, Chinese People’s Republic of China, Chinese Taiwan, and Korean Groove language pack Service Pack 2 patches. |
Due to technical issues during the initial release of the product, we are unable to support uninstall for this limited set of updates. To resolve this issue, uninstall the Language Pack. This will remove the Service Pack patches. |
Uninstalling Service Pack 2 might remove the functionality of the 2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS if this add-in was installed prior to Service Pack 2. |
To restore this functionality, you can reinstall the add-in. Alternatively, you can repair the add-in by using Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel (or Programs and Features in Control Panel in Windows Vista). |
Some files are left at the Service Pack 2 version after uninstalling Service Pack 2. |
This is a Windows Installer issue that might occur if you install Service Pack 2 directly over the released version of the 2007 Office system and then uninstall Service Pack 2. If Service Pack 2 is installed over Service Pack 1, and then Service Pack 2 is uninstalled, this issue does not occur. If you are using Windows Installer version 3.1, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 968006: After you uninstall some software updates in Windows Server 2003 or in Windows XP, some assembly files still display the updated file version instead of the original file version (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=144519). If you are using Windows Installer versions 4.0 or 4.5, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 967756: After you uninstall some software updates in Windows Vista or in Windows Server 2008, some assembly files may still reflect the updated version instead of the original version of the files (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=144520). In each case, the Windows Installer fix must be applied before uninstalling Service Pack 2. |
Restart Manager might restart open applications on Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 when uninstalling Service Pack 2. |
If you have applications open and you uninstall Service Pack 2, the Restart Manager might shutdown and restart your applications. Therefore, it is recommended that you close any applications before you try to uninstall SP2 or SP3, as mentioned previously. |
Errors might occur when attempting to uninstall Service Pack 2. |
This situation can occur on computers with Windows Installer 4.5 and if the Office Customization Tool was used to customize setup. To fix this issue, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 967756: After you uninstall some software updates in Windows Vista or in Windows Server 2008, some assembly files may still reflect the updated version instead of the original version of the files (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=144520). The Windows Installer fix must be applied before uninstalling Service Pack 2. |