Office 2007 on Linux with Wine install guide

Written by Tom Wickline

Friday, 28 March 2008 13:56

About Office 2007

Microsoft Office 2007 (officially called 2007 Microsoft Office system) is the most recent version of Microsoft's productivity suite. Formerly known as Office "12" in the initial stages of its beta cycle, it was released to volume license customers on November 30, 2006 and made available to retail customers on January 30, 2007. These are, respectively, the same dates Windows Vista was released to volume licensing and retail customers. Office 2007 contains a number of new features, the most notable of which is the entirely new graphical user interface called the Fluent User Interface (initially referred to as the Ribbon UI), replacing the menus and toolbars that have been the cornerstone of Office since its inception. Office 2007 requires Windows XP with Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1, or Windows Vista.

Office 2007 also includes new applications and server-side tools. Chief among these is Groove, a collaboration and communication suite for smaller businesses, which was originally developed by Groove Networks before being acquired by Microsoft in 2005. Also included is Office SharePoint Server 2007, a major revision to the server platform for Office applications, which supports "Excel Services", a client-server architecture for supporting Excel workbooks that are shared in real time between multiple machines, and are also viewable and editable through a web page.

Microsoft FrontPage has been removed from the Office suite entirely. It has been replaced by Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer, which is aimed towards development of SharePoint portals. Its designer-oriented counterpart Microsoft Expression Web is targeted for general web development. However, neither application is included in any of the Office suites. Also, since speech recognition and handwriting recognition are now part of Windows Vista, speech and ink components have been removed from Office 2007. Handwriting and speech recognition work with Office 2007 only on Windows Vista or Windows XP Tablet PC Edition.

Product Information

Microsoft Office 2007 is a complete suite of productivity and database software that includes the 2007 versions of Publisher, Excel, Outlook, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, PowerPoint, Access, and Word. Powerful contact management features help you consolidate all customer and prospect information in one place, while improved menus present the right tools exactly when you need them. Office 2007 also lets you develop professional marketing materials for print, e-mail, and the Web, and produce effective marketing campaigns in-house. In addition, you can create dynamic business documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, and build databases with no prior experience or technical staff.

Whether you're working on a financial spreadsheet, creating an important presentation, or building a customer database, Office 2007 helps you find and use the features you need faster and more easily. The intuitive look and feel of this software, including task-based menus and toolbars that are automatically displayed based on the feature you are using, improves your productivity. With Publisher 2007, you can create and publish a wide range of marketing materials for print, e-mail, and the web with your own brand elements including logo, colors, fonts, and business information. Or take advantage of hundreds of professionally designed and customizable templates, and more than 100 blank publication types. This software also lets you reuse text, graphics, and design elements, and convert content from one publication type to another. You can also combine and filter mailing lists and data from multiple sources, including the 2007 versions of Excel, Outlook, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, and Access, to create personalized print and e-mail materials, and build custom collateral such as catalogs and datasheets.

Wine configuration

This is with a clean configuration directory and running in a 1024x768 virtual desktop.

Wine version tested: 0.9.58
Windows version emulated: XP
Office version: Microsoft Office 2007

$ winecfg

Once the .wine directory is built the configuration tool will start and you can set a virtual desktop in the graphics tab if you wish.

Installing Microsoft Office 2007

To install Microsoft Office 2007 the first thing you will need to get is a copy of CrossOver Games. CrossOver Games to install Office 2007? yes!

After you have a copy of CrossOver Games on hand install it, and then go to ~/cxgames/lib/wine and copy the rpcrt4.dll.so to ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32 you will need to re-name the pointer rpcrt4.dll that is currently in ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32 to *.bak and then re-name the rpcrt4.dll.so to rpcrt4.dll

While your already in /system32 re-name msxml3.dll also to *.bak the next thing to do is run winecfg again and set msxml3.dll and rpcrt4.dll to "native windows" select save and exit.

You will now need to Install Microsoft XML Parser (MSXML)3
The easiest way to do this is to download winetricks and do the install via the winetricks script.
You might need to mount your Office 2007 CD with the option -o unhide. This will avoid having problems with hidden files during installation.

Mount and cd to your disk and start the install.

mount -t iso9660 -o unhide /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom0

tom@tom:~$ cd /media/cdrom0
tom@tom:/media/cdrom0$ wine setup.exe

Office 2007 Word

Office 2007 Excel

Office 2007 PowerPoint

Office 2007 Publisher

Office 2007 OneNote

Notes

There is still a number of unresolved bugs, please keep this in mind.
If you don't already own CrossOver Office or CrossOver Games now is a good time to become a customer and help support future Wine development.
I would at this time like to take the time and give a one finger solute to the prick who has been going around saying the past install was a fake. I really cant say what I really want to, as im trying to cut back on cuss words.