Office for Mac 2011 Retina update not working — Fix!

3 Comments on Office for Mac 2011 Retina update not working — Fix!

Today Microsoft released a Retina update for the entire Office for Mac suite. After installing it however the apps still opened in non-retina mode. A reboot didn’t help either.

Turns out Microsoft forgot to change the modification date of each Office for Mac app, a date which Finder uses to detect any changes — such as Retina support — in any app.

To force Finder detecting the new versions of the apps, run this command at the terminal:

touch /Applications/Microsoft\ Office\ 2011/Microsoft\ Document\ Connection.app /Applications/Microsoft\ Office\ 2011/Microsoft\ Excel.app /Applications/Microsoft\ Office\ 2011/Microsoft\ Outlook.app /Applications/Microsoft\ Office\ 2011/Microsoft\ PowerPoint.app /Applications/Microsoft\ Office\ 2011/Microsoft\ Word.app

This command will update each Office for Mac app modification time, after which Finder will reload each app’s info.plist file (which, amongst some other properties, defines if an app can be opened in Retina mode or not).

Published by Bramus!

Bramus is a frontend web developer from Belgium, working as a Chrome Developer Relations Engineer at Google. From the moment he discovered view-source at the age of 14 (way back in 1997), he fell in love with the web and has been tinkering with it ever since (more …)

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3 Comments

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  2. Didn’t work 🙁 tried a few other fixes, including one found on an MS blog saying to copy them out to a different folder and re-add into applications after deleting the originals .. that didn’t work either

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