Office 2007 Pro – Setup cannot find Word.en-usWordLR.cab/ The longest file transfer in the history of mankind

Last Updated on February 21, 2023

I thought I’d share this delightful error message for you as it’s really not very clear what the Office 2007 installer is asking for, or how to solve it.

Setup cannot find Word.en-usWordLR.cab

When this error pops up during the Office 2007 install process you may think the installer is struggling to find some files it needs for the installation of Office 2007, would you not? Surely as I’ve bought Office 2007 and am using the official install disc all the files needed would be on the disc?

Well yes, they are.

This is a stupid licence issue, the file the installer is looking for actually appears to belong to the previous version of Office you’ve been using on your computer. The real frustration is trying to browse to the file that is needed. The error that pops up offers no help here, there’s no mention that this is a licence issue, it looks much like there is an error with the install disc (I actually returned the first disc I got, and I’m an IT professional with ten years experience of swearing at Microsoft!) I even tried downloading the trial version of Office 2007 professional and activating it using the code I have BOUGHT but no, that doesn’t work, I mean, why would it? That would be far too simple wouldn’t it.

The Solution to the ‘Setup cannot find Word.en-usWordLR.cab’ error message.

Okay, so enough of my ranting, here’s how I fixed the problem, well actually here’s a few ways I tried to fix the problem, now how’s that for value for money! Before starting I uninstalled every previous version of Office, I’m not convinced this will help as Microsoft has a habit of hiding things in the registry forever, like a stubbord stain.

Fix 1

The first time I got this error I popped in the install disc from a previous version of Office and the install continued. That makes about as much sense as older versions of Office demanding the install disc when uninstalling, which they did. But because my purchased licence code won’t activate this version the fix is pretty useless, I’m just mentioning it as it may work for you.

Fix 2

I found a suggestion that I could clear this error if I took out the install disc and placed it in a shared drive on another computer on my network, then mapped a network drive back to the machine I’m trying to install on. Well I’ve got a slight problem with that, the machine I’m trying to install Office 2007 on is Vista Home Premium, the host computer is XP Media Centre Edition. Despite the fact I have shared the host drive with full permissions the Vista machine is still telling me I don’t have access. I own this machine, I have so much access to it I could open the case and defecate on the motherboard I have so much F’n access. So I can’t map the drive, and any continued attempts to find the missing ‘WordLR.cab’ file result in the irritating ‘Invalid Location’ error. After hammering the ‘ok’ button and making a high pitched squealing noise at the screen the error eventually went away, as did the Browse For Folder dialogue box and left me staring at a progress bar trying to figure out it if’s moving at all. After about ten minutes the Browse For Folder box popped up again asking for the same file, *sigh*.

Fix 3

Another forum user suggests I copy the contents of the DVD to my hard drive, and try the install from there. Of course explorer froze then crashed when I tried to acess the DVD. My goodness, if I didn’t have to support this junk I’d never use Microsoft. Ten minutes later the files started copying, and even although I have no other programs running (on the desktop) on a 64 edtion of Windows, and 4gb of ram it’s claiming copying the files is going to take two hours. *heavy sigh*

1pm – After half an hour an error message popped up saying there was an error reading the disk *grinds teeth*.

1.25pm – It’s still ticking away twenty minutes later, I’ve downloaded DVDs worth of data faster than this!

1.40pm – Losing will to live…

2pm – 2.05pm – I’m starting to wonder if I could have copy typed the contents of the DVD quicker than this? The amount remaining went up a few minutes ago and the time remaining said ‘44338877 hours’, wow, so I only have to wait another 5061 years for this transfer to complete, and here I was starting to get impatient!

2.10pm – Wa-hoo, only just under twenty years to go now!

2.15pm – Ah nuts, things have slowed down again, now I have to wait around 129 years for the transfer to complete!

2.25pm – Ah nuts, the amount to copy has rocketing up from 39.8mb ten minutes ago, to 317mb just now, is windows writing to this non-writeable disc?

2.40pm –

Wa-hoo, only 99 years to go!

4.25pm –If the data keeps growing at this rate it will cover 4/5 of the earth’s surface by lunchtime tomorrow.

4.45pm –Screw this, I want my life back, cancel, cancel and cancel! I refuse to believe these problems are file related, I’m positive they are all related to Microsoft’s over anxious licensing restrictions. I buy software, so why am I punished as a criminal for it? It’s like putting a newborn baby in prison in case they commit a crime as an adult.

The conclusionWhy did I have to spent nearly an entire day trying to install a product used by tens of millions of people? Why do we continue to use Microsoft when they repeatedly smash us in the face with irritating and unclear error messages. Just like those irritating anti-piracy adverts on movies we’re being punished as criminals without any jury and indeed without having commited any crime! Oh yeah, it’s because we HAVE to use Microsoft products, because otherwise none of our contacts could use any of the files we create!

If I do find a solution I’ll post it back up on this thread.UPDATE – 5.50pmI thought I’d try running direct from the install disk again, shouldn’t have bothered.

UPDATE – next day 2pm

I decided that as I’d already lost two days worth of productivity I would download and install office, the code I bought still doesn’t work but at least I’ll squeeze some work out of my computer before the trial period runs out, hopefully by then the people I bought the licence off will be able to help me. Despite the fact I totally uninstalled every version of office I could find all my settings were still in Outlook after I installed the trial, proving my earlier point that you can’t actually totally uninstall Microsoft products. Mind you, it saved me a bunch of hassle in that I didn’t have to set everything up again!

I went to PC World last night and looked at iMacs, oh they’re real pretty!