Technology tips for the Apple centric.

Error Message in Microsoft Office

I had a weird Microsoft Office bug a few months back. Every time I would open Word or Excel I would get this error in a dialog box:

Microsoft Visual Basic Run-time error `53'
File not found: /Libary/Application Support/Adobe/MACPDFM/MacPDFM.framework/Versions/A/MacPDFM

I would dismiss it, but it would return every time I opened a file or started the app. It got to be very annoying after a while. Fortunately, there is a fix.

  1. Close all Office applications.
  2. Go to /Users/your-user-name-here/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User Content/Startup/Word.
  3. Remove linkCreation.dotm.
  4. Restart Word and problem solved.

This should fix the problem for Microsoft Word, but a few additional steps are needed for Excel and Powerpoint:

  1. Remove the SaveAsAdobePDF.ppam and SaveAsAdobePDF.xlam from the PowerPoint and Excel folders next to the Word folder.
  2. Launch Excel and PowerPoint and go to the menu Tools -> Excel Add-ins… and Tools -> PowerPoint Add-ins…, respectively, and remove the Save as Adobe PDF add-in, by unchecking it and removing it with the “-“ button and then click OK.
  3. Restart Excel and PowerPoint and the problem should go away.

This fix has really saved my sanity.