Summary: Microsoft Office includes several programs, including Word, Excel and Outlook. Uninstalling only one of them is fairly easy using Office Setup.
I have a new PC with Vista on it. I have installed MS Office 2003. I do not want to use Outlook. I'd rather use Windows mail which came on the PC. How do I uninstall just the Outlook program? When I go to add/remove programs I have to delete the whole MS Office edition.
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Actually it is a tad confusing, I agree. We tend to think of Outlook as a standalone program, and as such would expect to find it listed individually in Add/Remove.
The problem is, from Office Setup's point of view, it's not a program.
It's a feature.
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I'll be mixing Office 2007 and Office 2003 here, but the concepts apply to both.
The short version is that Outlook is considered a "feature" of the larger Microsoft Office package. That means that in order to uninstall it, we'll Change the configuration of Office.
In Vista, that means in Control Panel, Programs and Features, we locate and right click on Microsoft Office's entry:
Note that one of the options is to Change the installation. Click on that.
Microsoft Office setup will run, and offer you this choice:
Make sure that Add or Remove Features is selected, and press Next:
At this point you'll see all the major components (or "features") of Microsoft Office listed, with checkboxes indicating which are currently installed. To remove one, simply clear its checkbox, and press Next. That should remove that component.
I'll also leave you with this thought: consider not uninstalling it at all. Outlook in particular is benign - it doesn't do anything except take up some disk space unless you actually use it. In the grand scheme of things, it might be simpler to just let sleeping programs ... er, features ... lie.
Related:
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How should I setup Outlook? In this fifth in a series of articles covering my new computer's setup, we continue by making adjustments to Microsoft Outlook.
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Is Office 2003 compatible with Widows Vista? Various issues are leading people to wonder if Office 2003 will work on Windows Vista. Yes, it will. We'll look at some of the possible problems.
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How can I open Office 2007 files in older versions of Office? Office 2007 introduces a new XML based file format for its documents. There's a download for older versions off office to read and write the new format.
Article C3701 - April 12, 2009
I used to use Outlook Express but I have Vista now. At times I get a error message saying my old
Posted by: Byron Cox Jrf. at April 14, 2009 8:44 AMsmtp is not recognized. It makes little difference but is disturbing at times.
I have had my share of problems with Outlook. For some reason when my computer gets an update from Microsoft,outlook becomes my email for some reason. Therefore I need to go back to INTERNET explorer go to tolls and reset my windows XP back to Outlook Express. I do not know how to run Outlook. Has anyone have any Idea how to set this outlook express so that it stays there.Also were do I find the reply to this?
Posted by: mike at April 14, 2009 9:24 AMEach to his own but, for the life of me, I can't think why anyone would want to delete Outlook. Even in my mid-sixties, I couldn't live without it. It is set to auto-start when I boot up on a Monday morning and is the only program which remains running 24/5 until I shut down on a Friday evening.
Posted by: Bill Chubb at April 14, 2009 10:04 AMI don't use outlook for the mail feature, however I use the contacts. It has a lot of blanks to fill. "Works" also seems to use the same contacts but it sorts them by the first name which is almost useless.
Posted by: duane at April 14, 2009 1:00 PMI, too, prefer "Outlook Express" to "Outlook." I have used a program called "Time and Chaos" for a contact manager for years and it suits my purposes better than "Outlook." I hate the fact that MS insists on making "Outlook" the default mail service every time there's an update, but at least they give you a button to restore OE to the preferred program when you open it. I thought I'd removed "Outlook" from my computer, but will use Leo's method of killing it to see if I can finally put an end to that annoyance.
Posted by: Bill Nelson at April 14, 2009 6:28 PMI've got to like Outlook a lot over the years, from way back in the Office 97 days. I use it for personal and business email, for its Contact manager, for the Calendar, and I use Tasks to keep track of bills, etc. Good prog, IMO (and No, the cheque from Microsoft is NOT in the mail).
Posted by: Mark at April 15, 2009 2:21 AMThis program may help. I've used it in the pass. its called XPlite from http://www.litepc.com/xplite.html
Remove what Microsoft claims you can't. One warning; If you remove Outlook you may get an error message when starting up your computer/messenger about a missing file.
You have two choices here - ignor it or download a copy of the file and copy it to your Windows\sytem32 folder. Can't remeber the name right of but it might eve be on your Windows CD.
You can download missing .dll files from www.dlldump.com or www.dll-files.com
remember to unzip them first.
http://www.geocities.com/terryhollett2003/
Posted by: Terry Hollett at April 15, 2009 3:53 AMI used OE for some years until I downloaded SP2 for Windows XP. All of a sudden I had Outlook and OE had disappeared. How can I get OE back? It doesn't seem to be on Microsoft's website
Posted by: Dave at April 15, 2009 5:13 AMFor the life of me I cannot understand why anyone would not use Outlook. I in particular am not a good typist and using Outlook allows me to use Word as the means to write an E-Mail with the nicety of a good spellchecker and autocorrect for my many mistypes like ahve for have, etc. Also, if I want to save the E-Mail I just start it in Word, then hit the Icon to send a copy by E-Mail. Just so much more versatility than Outlook Express.
Posted by: Joe Moyer at April 15, 2009 8:30 AMSome responses to posts...
MIKE, I think as long a you use IE to download updates from Microsoft then it will default to the Outlook at your preferred email program. Of course when I removed Outlook, Outlook Express become the default.
DAVE, if you want Outlook Express, go download it at: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/oe/. At that site are some very helpful articles, including one one Outlook Express benefitting from re-registering too.
Posted by: Wendy Mcleod at April 15, 2009 9:18 AM