You don't reinstall the entire computer. You just insert the Office 2003
CD, and ask it to reinstall Office. It leaves all your settings, data etc.
intact. The whole process takes about ten minutes.

--
PT
"Simon Cooke" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 18:52:37 -0700, PT wrote:

I had this problem doing an update of Office 2003. After some flailing, I
learned that, unlike previous versions of Office, which kept all the .CAB
files on the installation CD's, Office 2003 copies them all to your HD.
Thus, to do an update with O2003, you must have the .CAB files on the HD.
Office 2003 won't look to the Installation CD's.

The problem is that it's really easy to delete the Office .CAB files if
you
use the Disk Cleanup routine in My Computer. If you do so, Office can no
longer be updated, unless you first haul out the O2003 installation CD's,
and do a reinstall.

It seems to me that this newer setup is really poor. First, it clogs your
HD with 250+ MB of files, and second, because they get included
automatically in the Disk Cleanup checklist, it's really an accident
waiting
to happen.

To prevent this accident, you should, after reinstalling, load the Disk
Cleanup routine in My Computer, and then uncheck the box "Office Setup
Files".

Unfortunately, I'm not willing to reinstall my entire laptop - I don't have
an install CD for OneNote; it comes as part of the Toshiba Restore
procedure.