I have installed Office 365 alongside Office 2010 on a dozen or so Windows 7 machines, so that they may co-exist; and to mitigate the need to re-replace Office should there be any unforeseen incompatibility issues or user-hate toward Office 365.
Users of these machines have been pleased with Office 365 and no longer require 2010; whereby some have requested for Office 2010 to be removed from their computer. However, uninstalling Office 2010 from a computer which has Office 365 also installed (using click-to-run) somewhat breaks Office 365.
After 2010 has been removed, Office document icons are unknown (the default white icon for an unknown file are present) although they are configured in default programs to open in the correct office app (e.g. Word 2010 (desktop) to open .docx files). Double clicking such (unknown) document files does not open the "open with" dialogue box, but does nothing. Resetting default program settings also does not help. The only way to open office files is to open the respective application first and then open the document by using the open dialogue.
The only way I know to fix the problem is via a program offline repair (via programs and features). An office 365 online repair does not work, but results in error.
Is there a known method to uninstall office 2010 without breaking office 365 and needing to run a repair?
Many thanks.
Best Answer
Response from Microsoft:
Basically, there is no reference to the issue of uninstalling Office 2010 on a machine which has both Office 2010 and Office 365 installed. Presumably this also applies to Office 2007, based on the above MS response.
In conclusion, it is advisable to not install Office 365 alongside Office 2010 (or 2007) if you need/would like to remove Office 2010 at a later date - without uninstalling both products and re-installing Office 365 or repairing the broken O365 installation.