I have to admit that I absolutely love Office 12, I’ve be using it on Ubuntu since 8.04 and OpenOffice just doesn’t compare! So, I needed to install Office 2007 onto Ubuntu 9.04 (as I did a clean install). If you do too, follow along with my handy guide!

Uninstall Previous Versions Of Wine

For some odd reason, Office 2007 will not run on a version of Wine above 1.1.14. For that reason, if you currently have Wine installed, uninstall it by follow these steps:
  1. Open the terminal.
  2. Enter the following:
    sudo apt-get remove wine
  3. Remove the hidden Wine folder by entering the following into the terminal:
    rm -rf ~/.wine

Install Wine

I’ll be using Wine 1.1.14 as I know it works.
  1. Open Firefox and navigate to the The WineHQ .deb Packages Archives and download Wine 1.1.14 for your system architecture.
  2. Install the .deb
  3. You will see a dialog box that reads: “An older version is available in the software channel.”
  4. Click the “Close” button.
  5. Click the “Install Package” button.
  6. Enter your password to install Wine.

Install Microsoft Office 2007

Now the fun part!
  1. Insert your Microsoft Office 2007 install disc into your computer’s CD-ROM drive.
  2. Look for the setup.exe executable.
  3. Right-click the installer and click “Open with other application”
  4. Choose Wine Windows Program Loader.
  5. Enter your serial number.
  6. Accept the User Agreement.
  7. Click the large “Install Now” button

    If you click the Customize button, you can chose which components you want to install. You can also enter your name, initials and company name. This information will be embedded into every document that you create, just like in the PC version.

Install Winetricks

  1. Switch back to the terminal and enter the following:
    sudo wget www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
  2. Once complete, enter this command:
    sudo apt-get install cabextract
  3. Enter the following:
    sh winetricks corefonts tahoma vcrun2005sp1 wsh56js
  4. Agree the Visual C++ license agreement.
  5. Click the “Yes” button to install Windows Script 5.6
  6. Agree to the license agreement.

Configure Wine

  1. Enter the following into the terminal:
    winecfg
  2. Switch to the Libraries tab
  3. In the New override for libraries combo box, enter: riched20 and click the “Add” button
  4. With riched20 highlighted, click the “Edit” button.
  5. Select the “Native (Windows)” radio button and click the “OK” button.
  6. Enter usp10 into the New override for libraries combo box.
  7. Click the “OK” button to close the Wine configuration dialog box.

Test Microsoft Office 2007

All of the Microsoft Office applications should now have appeared in your application menu: Applications->Wine->Programs->Microsoft Office