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Trouble with Microsoft Office Update? Blame OneNote

A couple of months back, this site made a silly mistake and assumed that OneNote beta was a full version of the software. OneNote is a wonderful program for Tablet users ... and the new version is, now, available, and so is Service Pack One. Which is where the fun starts ...

The new version was trialled during June, and added video to the sound-recording features. But of course, OneNote is really just a word processor for pen-driven computers - so why is this bad news for Office?

Well, officially, OneNote is part of Office 2003. But for some reason, Microsoft released the update version in a standalone form, and so in order to run it, you had to uninstall the previous version - which was an optional part of Microsoft Office - and install the new one, which wasn't. So the old version was Office, but the new version, beta, was not.

The trouble is, Update, when installing SP1 for Office 2003, checks to see which versions of Office software you've installed. Word - check; Excel - check; Publisher - check ... and so on until it finds OneNote. When Office Update finds it, it assumes this is the version that is part of Office. So it adds SP1 for OneNote to the SP1 download.

And then, when you try to install SP1, it crashes.

The error message isn't the most helpful of all messages in the history of error messages. Succinctly, it simply says:

"Installation unsuccessful."

Microsoft's Knowledge Base doesn't shed any light on this. Why should it? Way back in June, when you were given your beta version of OneNote, it warned clearly that before you could install the final version, you'd have to uninstall the beta first.

And that turns out to solve the problem. Uninstall OneNote; run Office Update, and then re-install OneNote.

Only small problem: if you didn't have the full version before, you'll have to buy it now. Which will set you back an eye-watering £169 retail in the UK. Quite a punch for a word processor for pens.

What makes it worth the money? Simply, its sound and video annotating abilities. It doesn't just record sound, but it indexes the stream using your notes. And the same for video. Click on the scribble you wrote on your tablet (or the text you typed into your notebook- it works fine there, too) and it will jump to whatever was going on in audio or video at the time.

This means that you can make minutes for a long and boring meeting, by writing: "end of boring guff about the Chairman's daughter" when the discussion gets back on topic - and later, when transcribing it, simply skip past the stories from school by clicking on that note.

OK, that makes it good; maybe it doesn't make it worth £169 retail - but it is good.