Hi, Just installed a new copy of Office 2007 Professional and every time I click on "?" The Microsoft Office Help Viewer pops up with a message saying, "There is a problem with one or more installed help files, please repair your Office installation and try again." Repair does not fix the problem (I tried 2x). Also, tried unistalling and then installing - still the help does not work. Ran 16 step Diagnostic with "No Problems" showing up. Help Files, "?" still do not work. Please, does anyone know what is going on and how to fix this. Please help, thank you in advance.

Did you ever get this problem resolved?

I am having exactly the same problem - and now, having just installed Visio 2007 - guess what!?

I can't believe that I can't find the answer to this online... MS MUST have seen other people with the problem (e.g. cosmostardust...)

Help!?

I've finally found a solution - thanks to something someone (who I cannot now find to thank) posted.

As they did - I went to settings/advanced in IE and clicked the reset button. You kind of have to grit your teeth 'cos it's going to change a few things (well for me). Anyway - after that - help works!

Typically frustrating and mysterious!

• Proposed as answer by JCrossfield Wednesday, April 20, 2011 6:11 PM
• Unproposed as answer by JCrossfield Wednesday, April 20, 2011 6:12 PM
• Proposed as answer by JCrossfield Wednesday, April 20, 2011 6:12 PM

Not even close!

Not too certain why one would publish something for IE when the problem is in Office. Guess someone gets-off by publishing mis-information.

Has anyone out there been able to resolve the error in Office 2007 - "There is a problem with one or more installed help files, please repair your Office installation and try again."

Any related comments or resolution advise would be greatly appreciated.

Bobby

Several months ago I contacted Microsoft. Well after several days and hours of trying different things such as editing the registry and what have you (what a pain and nerve racking)...they told me to create a new user profile and reinstall Office. -It worked. Before doing this, if you have files in "my Documents" I would suggest moving them to a subfolder below C: (it will be easier to locate the files in the new profile (that is if your not familiar navigated to other profiles) Also, if you use Outlook, look to see where all you personal data files are and WRITE down the path. That way after you create the new user profile you can go back and COPY all your data (especially Contacts) to the New User Profile Outlook Data folder. I know, I know this is a real pain in the %#&. But as far as I know it's the only choice if you want to be able to access the help files. Do it (be very careful) it works! All the best! Let us know how it works out. Thanks!

Does anyone know how to fix it?

Hi, cosmostardust. Thanks for your very helpful post: it solved my problem! I posted a question about this in the Office-General forums there seemed to be several other members in the same situation but no-one knew the answer. Fortunately, your post came up in a Google search for the Office 2007 help problem.

Not being an expert just your average pensioner I experimented with creating new user accounts, etc, before committing myself. At that stage, I discovered that:

- I would need to uninstall Office 2007 from my existing user account before I could reinstall it in a new account (probably obvious to everyone except me!);

- The new user account default settings were very different from the existing user account, and settings for several programs, e.g. Roxio, didnt seem to have carried over to the new account. Hoping to avoid the chore of reinstalling these programs (in addition to Office) and repersonalising my desktop, etc, I decided to try a trick Id found on another site: to use the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard to transfer files and settings to the new account.

In case it is of help to other novice users, this is what I did, step by step:

- I copied my Outlook archive .pst and outlook.pst files to my data files external HD. That HD already contained my rolling backups of Excel/Access/Word/Powerpoint files, and a single backup of my music files, from the My Documents folder on my C:\ drive, so I didnt need to copy them again. Its worth noting that the process of uninstalling Office 2007 deleted the two archive .pst and outlook.pst files from the Outlook folder on my C:\ drive, so its a good job I followed the spirit of your advice!

- I uninstalled Office 2007 from the existing user account.

- I ran the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard to transfer files and settings to the external HD. I also ran it again to transfer just the settings, to give me another option. It took a long time (over 30 minutes) for the full files and settings transfer, whereas the settings alone were transferred very quickly. Although I eventually went the full files and settings transfer route, I think it would have been better to just transfer the settings, and then copy and paste the data files from old to new user account . At the very least, I should have checked the temp folders first, to clear out any unnecessary files!

- I created a new user account, using the option in Control Panel.

- I logged in to the new user account, and ran the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard to transfer files and settings to the new user account. I then did a few checks. The new user account seemed to be OK, although I was surprised that not all settings had been transferred, e.g. my broadband login details. (I still use a USB modem; perhaps its not a problem with a router.)

- I installed Office 2007 in the new user account, opened Access, Word, and Excel in turn, and pressed the F1 key. Success: all help files now available!

- I started Outlook, and found that my email settings hadnt been transferred either, so I had to set up my email account again. Fortunately, I had kept all the broadband setup instructions that my ISP (PlusNet) had supplied when I joined them in September 2007, so it wasnt too difficult, even for an old duffer like me! Then I copied the old archive .pst and outlook.pst files from the external HD to the new user accounts Outlook folder.

- I then made several visits to the Windows Update site, and installed all the available high priority and optional updates. The downloads (over 400MB) had In fact been retained from the previous installation - they hadnt been deleted from the C:\ drive in the Office uninstall process so they only needed to be reinstalled, which saved a lot of download time!

Unless anyone thinks it would be risky, my long term intention is to delete the old user account from my PC, since its inconvenient to have two user accounts. Ill only do this when Im fairly sure that the new user account has everything I need from the old user account. Ill wait at least 3 months!

By the way, the Internet Explorer 8 reset solution mentioned in Halians post did NOT work for me!

Solution-

For what ever reason in our environment, accounts with user rights on the PC were having this problem with "There is a problem with one or more installed help files, please repair your Office installation and try again" and the spell checker not working.

Users with admin rights were fine.

Two files were not being created in the user profile as they should have been. Settings12.xml and settings12.xml.sig

they should be in <user profile>\Application Data\Microsoft\CLView\1033

Solution, got the two files using an admin account, put in in domain logon scripts (an IF NOT EXIST ... xopy... ), and all now appears fine...

Must be some kind of bug - we suspect something in the default domain profile is at fault.

Sukh

• Proposed as answer by yongyi781 Tuesday, November 10, 2009 12:11 AM

This is the closest I've found to a solution yet. I have verified that the systems in our environment that are having this problem are missing the files mentioned above. But, users do have admin rights and copying the files over doesn't fix it... this started appearing for us when we deployed WSUS updates last month. I think it's related to the .net Framework updates, but am not sure. Glad that fixed it for you, and like I said those files are missing on our broken systems, but when I copy them over I no longer get the error, Help opens but it is just blank. Nothing displays...

I am using the administrative profile and this is a problem for me. I've been all over the web and cannot find an answer that works. I've tried many many possible resolutions...including the above posts by Skhudy and Paul Moran. As a lowly user of Office 2007 I am kinda discouraged.
_____________________
Mark
Windows Vista Home Premium 32Bit SP2
MS Office Professional SP2

• Edited by AKMARK5000 Thursday, November 19, 2009 9:28 PM spelling and added info

Just a testimonial on Skhudy's solution...

I was having this issue ver batim with one user. Logged into the computer with a test account (account had never logged onto this computer before, so the profile was newly created) and could open Office help just fine.

Noticed that the file mentioned by Skhudy did exist in the test account profile, but did NOT exist in the affected user's profile.

Copied the files from the test account profile to the affected user's profile, had the user log back in and Office help worked fine.

Office 2007 relies heavily on online sources in its help platform, so saying "not even close" to Halian is not fair and sort of ignorant (in both the dictionary and the derogatory senses of the word).

In addition, I have heard that solution suggested from a few other sources, so Kreck621 - it looks like you stand alone. Please be informed before you accuse people...

Last August, I posted that I had cured my "help" problem by using a solution posted by cosmostardust in November 2008 - a solution recommended by MicroSoft, in fact.

About 3 months later, the problem recurred. I couldn't think of anything special I'd done to bring this about, so I resigned myself to a repeat of the "cure" at some future date.

Last week, I installed Norton Internet Security 2009 - last year's model is always cheaper! - to replace ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite. Guess what - "help" is back again! Of course, it could just be a coincidence, and it might not last long!

I finally figured out what was causing the problem on our systems.  After deploying Office 2007 division-wide to about 550 computers and 5 terminal servers, we found about 10 or so exhibiting this problem.  As I mentioned earlier, they would either give this error messages, and when they did, the Settings12.xml and settings12.xml.sig were missing from user profile>\Application Data\Microsoft\CLView\1033.  When the files were there, Help would open but would just be blank.  We also noticed that Windows Help would display text content, but the graphics would not display.

Turns out the culprit was McAfee Antivirus, VSE 8.5i w/patch 8.  More specifically, I found that uninstalling the ePO agent and reinstalling it (the McAfee agent that communicates with our ePO server) fixed the issue on these systems.  After endless hours of troubleshooting, and opening a case with MS with no luck, I decided to start uninstalling apps one at a time and that was how I found the solution...  it never seemed related to McAfee and all of our systems run it so I have no explanation as to why about 10 or so systems had the problem.  Disabling the On-Access scan feature on the systems never made a difference either.
And reinstalling the agent pointed it back to the same ePO server applying the same policies...  but I believe it somehow caused some XML rendering problems.

As for the post above about Norton and Zone Alarm, I suppose they could be blocking the CLview.exe program from connecting to Office Online...


cheers

Since the middle of 2009 I have had this problem, i.e. "There is a problem with one or more installed help files, please repair your Office installation and try again."

I have tried the solution as applied by Paul Moran without any success.

Also whether the user does or does not have Admin rights makes no difference.

However I cannot find the files Settings12.xml and settings12.xml.sig in <user profile>\Application Data\Microsoft\CLView\1033.

I would be grateful if someone could suggest from where can I obtain these files?

 Plus any other suggestions for possible fixes would be appreciated.

My system uses Windows Vista Version 6 Service pack 2
Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007
Mcafee Security Centre Version 9.15 and associated Mcafee, Virus Scan, Personal Firewall, Site advisor and Anti-Spam.

All the Best.

Try logging on to the computer with a different account and see if the files are there.  Alternatively, you should be able to copy them over from another computer where Help works correctly.

Also, try disabling your McAfee firewall and see if that corrects the problem.  If not, try uninstalling the McAfee Security Center completely and reboot, and see if it works then (you can always reinstall McAfee)

Owellwhatever, Thanks for the suggestions.

I could not find the files Settings12.xml and settings12.xml.sig when logging on with a different account.

In the case of copying the files from another PC where HELP works. I could not find these files although I did search for them on two other PC's.

I also have disabled  McAfee but without success also I disabled McAfee and then tried to log on with a new account but that did not work either.

Actually un-installing McAfee I would like to treat as a last resort.

Hence I would prefer to see if I could obtain the files Settings12.xml and settings12.xml.sig and see if this might fix the problem.

Are they available from the Microsoft web site. On line help does after all work.

All the Best

Tried all the suggestions henforth with no viable results. As a last ditch effort I tried giving my one network user administrative rights. Went to the users' machine and tried the help function and surprise, it worked. Then took away administrative rights and tried the users' workstation again and it worked again. My thoughts: even though Office 2007 was loaded with a user that had administrative rights, certain files did not get initialized correctly. Once these files were initialized and used correctly, the hooks were in place for correct performance.

Hope this helps.

I solved this problem by:

1. Opening Word 2007
2. Clicking on the "Office Button" in the upper left corner
3. Clicking "Word Options"
4. Selecting "Resources"
5. Clicking the "Diagnose" button to the right of "Run Microsoft Office Diagnostics"

At least one problem was found and corrected during the diagnostics, and now I have "Help" back.

Good Luck to everyone ... Hopefully, this will help you!

I also found the solution AzJazz tried. But it occurs on 2000+ PCs in my network and I need deploying it in a distributed system. Also all newly installed computers has this problem.

To my knowledge it is in the default user account or logged in user. I have been investigating a long time now.
But why Microsoft hasn't come up with a fix, beats me. This has been a problem for some time now.

Aardvark_

I have problem resemble this problem every time i press f1 say help topic not found.

 

when i review the language setting i discover the lang setting in excel option does not much excel interface language so.

 

you must review the language setting to solve this problem.

I've been unable to view the help files in Office 2010.  I finally did a clean install of Windows XP.  The problem was still present, so I did another reinstall on Windows XP (from the hidden partition on this Lenovo computer), but this time I only installed updates from Microsoft Update.  I still haven't installed any drivers for this computer.  I then installed Office 2010:  the help files displayed.  I installed McAfee antivirus software:  the help files stopped displaying.  I uninstalled McAfee:  help files displayed.  I'm using VirusScan Enterprise 8.7.0i, which is provided by my university.  To solve the problem (in my case), I went to the "VirusScan Console", right-clicked on "Access Protection" and selected "Properties", clicked on "Anti-virus maximum protection", and clicked on the rule, "Protect cached files from password and email address stealers".  Putting a checkmark in the "report" column shows that the file clview.exe is causing the problem.  I clicked on the "Edit" button and added ", CLVIEW.EXE" to the list of exceptions.  Now my help files are displaying.  Yeayus!

Chris

Success at last.

As of today 28 August 2010 I am able to open the Help files for the Office 2007 versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook etc.

I should point out that the opening of any Help files has not been possible or has ever worked after the installation of office 2007 on to my new Studio Dell Laptop in May 2009.

The steps I carried out today to fix the problem were as follows:

1. Completely uninstalled McAfee antivirus software and associated McAfee packages which came with the antivirus software. (For over a month I have been running successfully AVAST anti virus software).

I re-started the PC but clicking on the ? symbol, I still received the message

"There is a problem with one or more installed help files, please repair your Office installation and try again."

2. I then carried out the procedure as detailed AzJazz above, i.e.

1. Opening Word 2007
2. Clicking on the "Office Button" in the upper left corner
3. Clicking "Word Options"
4. Selecting "Resources"
5. Clicking the "Diagnose" button to the right of "Run Microsoft Office Diagnostics"

I should point out that no problems were indicated as being found during the diagnostics.

3. I then tried clicking on the ? symbol in Word and SUCCESS, the help page appeared. Just to confirm I then checked, Powerpoint, Project, Excel and the Help for these programmes worked as well.

So I hope my success helps other people suffering with the same problem.

All the Best. 

 

 

 

 

• Proposed as answer by Alf88 Sunday, October 03, 2010 2:56 AM

I have had the Help function with OFFICE 2007, however in my instance whenever I click the help icon '?' it automatically launches the setup mode and after going through the setup mode and rebooting the PC nothing changes and we just go round in circles. Very frustrating. 

Has anyone else had a similar problem with the help function.

 

Thanks for any help.

 

I called Microsoft support and they fixed the problem. What they made me do was go into the follow files "Microsoft Help" folders under: c\program data\, c\users\(all user's account)\appdata\local\, c:\users\default\appdata\local\, all users\ and change the file name to microsoft help old. I then opened Word and clicked on the help function. The program then automatically downloaded a new set of help files and after rebooting the PC it worked. I had to do the same with Excel and it also downloaded the help files, which now work. 

Hope this helps.

• Proposed as answer by Alf88 Sunday, October 24, 2010 7:55 AM
• Edited by Alf88 Sunday, October 24, 2010 8:00 AM

I had the same issue with Office 2010.  I know this is about Office 2007, but an Internet search sent me here, in looking for solution to a similar issue in Office 2010.

Anyway, in 2010, I got the Help files not installed notice after a new install.  Here's how I fixed it:

a) turn off all anti-virus, firewall, etc (don't know if required but that is what worked for me), and close all Office apps.

b) I read that in 2010 the 2007 Diagnostics program does not exist.  However, if you go to the Uninstall Program screen, click on Office 2010, and select the "Change" option, you'll get the same effect.

c) A new menu pops up, you don't have to reset personal data, just click on "Yes".  It does it's thing for a few minutes then says it's done.

d) Call up an Office App, and note that it needs to download some files automatically.  Once done, now the "?" and "F1" summons the help.

e) Remember to turn back on your anti-virus, firewall, etc.

 

Hope that helps others.

This does nothing for me.  I can't get any help files to work with Office 2010, and they also didn't work with Office 2007.  I installed 2010 in hopes it would resolve it, but no joy.  I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, and I'm using the 32 bit version of Office since they seem to suggest not to use the 64 bit version.

 

I've tried making IE the default browser as well as Firefox, nothing changes it.  This is the error I get from Firefox after it can't fine the off-line or on-line help.

 

Firefox can't find the file at /C:/Users/John Will/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary Internet Files/Content.IE5/BRBAJAT7/gooffline.

 

Anyone got any idea what is going on with Office?  This is not that keen.

I have had the Help function with OFFICE 2007, however in my instance whenever I click the help icon '?' it automatically launches the setup mode and after going through the setup mode and rebooting the PC nothing changes and we just go round in circles. Very frustrating.

Has anyone else had a similar problem with the help function.

 

Thanks for any help.

 

I called Microsoft support and they fixed the problem. What they made me do was go into the follow files "Microsoft Help" folders under: c\program data\, c\users\(all user's account)\appdata\local\, c:\users\default\appdata\local\, all users\ and change the file name to microsoft help old. I then opened Word and clicked on the help function. The program then automatically downloaded a new set of help files and after rebooting the PC it worked. I had to do the same with Excel and it also downloaded the help files, which now work. 

Hope this helps.

This definitely worked for me. However when you say it downloads a new set of help files some people may think that they are going around in circles again as you get the same screen saying "Configuring files" but this time it does work!!

• Proposed as answer by witchywoo Tuesday, November 02, 2010 3:57 PM

For me, de-installing and re-installing Office DID work (from the DVD), so definitely worth trying if easy or you run out of options.  I tried several other suggested solutions - Office Diagnostics and repair, rename Microsoft Help to Help Old, etc, but nothing worked.  I am running Windows 7 64 bit, Office 2007.  My symptoms started off as 'No help topics found' when clicking Help or F1 in ANY office program, and as I tried to fix it, gradually descended into various 'Your Office configuration is damaged, please repair' type messages, with continuing reboot requests.  I had started with a fresh Windows 7 64 bit build, fresh Office install, everything appeared to be working fine (but I had imported my old personal folders and archive files and moved them to my data drive - don't know if that triggered the problem?).  I backed up my Outlook data, re-inserted the DVD, clicked 'Remove', rebooted, clicked 'Install', and it worked.  Only difference was that I did a 'Custom installation' (original was default), but although I added a couple of options, I didn't customise very much, and nothing obviously relating to Help.

Hope this helps - re-install worked for me.

You are a genius! Everyone, no need of creating a new profile and moving everything to it. TOO much work and it is not a fix, just a work around. I certainly found out that the profile with this problem was missing the two files listed in this comment. I literally copied them from a profile that had no problems and pasted them in the same location in the profile with the problems and DONE! Like a charm!  

Check the default value for .xml files in the Registry Root.  It should be xmlfile.

My default value was MS Project File, which was displayed each time the Help (?) button was selected using offline help (an xml file was always displayed;  names of the xml files were browse0.xxx.xml or search0.xml).

Ok at first I thought no way and then tried this and it worked! Thanks Halian you gave me a lead to find a thread which also had a similiar twist.  I had just installed MS Office Pro 2010 on Vista and had this problem and had tried Repair utility, Uninstall and re-install, both methods with countless reboots which on Vista is hard work, and then the following neat trick worked; the current credit therefore to Arkoenig in the following forum!

http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f57/office-2010-will-not-display-its-own-help-files-557053.html

To quote from here:

'The trick is to launch Internet Explorer, select Tools -> Internet Options -> Delete...

Then make sure "Temporary Internet Files" is checked, "Preserve Favorites website data" is unchecked and select Delete again. If "Preserve Favorites website data" is left checked by accident, as I did the first few times I tried, it won't solve the problem :-)'

Needless to say I followed Arkoenig's instructions and it worked. I hope you all try this too.

ps. I had checked previously in the C:\Users\John\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\CLView\1033 folder as described in some earlier posts above, and the [in my case] Settings14.xml and Settings14.xml.sig were not there before running the delete on Temporary Internet Files. Following the file delete process, and I'm not sure if it was before or after I clicked the ? button in Word/Excel and launched help, the ..\..\CLView\1033 folder then contained the two missing files.

 

My problem is a little different. When I try to use the local help files that are located in the 1033 sub folder, the help window doesn't go there. What is displayed in the help window (offline) is :

<?xml version="1.0" ?>

<?xml-stylesheet type='text/xsl' href='File://C:\Users\Tom's\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\MsOfficeHelp12\MOHA5E7.tmp\toc.xsl'?>

 

- <assistance namespace="OUTLOOK" UseOnlineContent="1"> <title>Outlook</title> - <collections> - <collection> <url href="File://C:\Users\Tom's\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\MsOfficeHelp12\MOHA5E7.tmp\BROWSE2.OUTLOOK.xml">Accessibility</url> </collection>  

I ran into this issue with Visio 2007.  My resolution was at described in this post.  I had several other workstations I could copy the Settings12.xml and settings12.xml.sig from so I was lucky.

 

Solution -

For what ever reason in our environment, accounts with user rights on the PC were having this problem with "There is a problem with one or more installed help files, please repair your Office installation and try again" and the spell checker not working.

Users with admin rights were fine.

Two files were not being created in the user profile as they should have been. Settings12.xml and settings12.xml.sig

they should be in <user profile>\Application Data\Microsoft\CLView\1033

Solution, got the two files using an admin account, put in in domain logon scripts (an IF NOT EXIST ... xopy... ), and all now appears fine...

Must be some kind of bug - we suspect something in the default domain profile is at fault.

Sukh

Solved my issue.  Thanks

Here we are 4 1/2 years later with this same problem.  It appears to me that there are several different issues that cause this problem, depending on whether one is running a network or a single installation. 

I realise this after reading through this forum and thanks to the comments by Alf88, (KUDOS to Alf88) I am able to discover the solution for MY problem, which in my case it is a single installation.

There is a Folder in C:\ProgramDat\Microsoft Help\  ...  rename this folder to Microsoft Help.old

next search for this same folder name in the C:\Users\(user name)\AppData\Local\ for the  'Microsoft Help' folder ...  rename it to 'Microsoft Help.old' also.   Repeat for each user.

Run 'Repair' from your Office 2007 program CD.

Reboot.  Open an Office 2007 program.  It will take a minute or two to download the internet Help program links (I think). 

your F1 and ?Help keys should funtion properly. 

I spent hours and hours, easily a couple dozen, learning about this solution... with an excellent lead suggestion from Aravinda Balakrishna.    I hope this works for you. 

  

Although there hasn't been any activity for quite some time now, I just wanna post my solution. 

First of all, my configuration applies to a XenApp environment with Office 2010 running as a published application. A user complained that he was unable to access the Office help receiving the error message "There is a problem with one or more installed help files, please repair your Office installation and try again". 

Been investigating all day now until I recalled a setting I needed to set for a special application running on the same XenApp server. In my case, the Temporary Internet Files had been redirected to a network drive. The Office Help module didn't seem to be able to access the redirected folder properly and therefore the Office Help couldn't be displayed. 
I rolled back this setting to the default values - Temporary Internet Files located in the user's profile c:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\... and since then the Office Help is being displayed again. 

I know, not the typical type of installation but maybe someone else has created such a scenario and might struggle with the same problem. 

This problem surfaced for me in 2014 in Office 2007 Home and Student under Windows 7 Pro 32 bit.

Initially the problem was that I had an empty window where the help info should've been. If I selected off-line help I'd have a list of titles in the left pane but nothing would display in the right pane.

I don't know what I did wrong but after applying all the various fixes listed above (except creating another user profile) and probably a few others I then started getting the message "There is a problem with one or more installed help files, please repair your Office installation and try again."

Repair and re-installation didn't help, I even tried a third party uninstaller.

Eventually I un-installed Internet Explorer 11 which re-installed Internet Explorer 9 - problem fixed.

I would also like to mention that I had two other problems at the time which I did not know were related but were fixed.  One involved using Help files in other programs, I noticed small black boxes with white crosses appearing where their should have been graphics. The other problem involved two programs, when I used the programs' "check for updates" feature I would get an error message that the program could not connect to the internet.

Hope this helps others.

It can help by changing the internet settings which can be found in the installed internet browsers which then copies this information across and updates everything on your computer, for example changing the proxy settings on IE then allows every program on the computer to connect to the internet.

Not saying it's always going to be right but it is something to consider giving it a try.