Microsoft® Office 2003 includes a self-repairing feature. If a critical resource is missing, such as a file or registry key that is required to start an Office application, Office detects and repairs it.

To accomplish this, Office determines the components that make up each feature, and the resources (files or registry keys) that make up each component. For each component, one or more resources are designated as keypaths, those resources that are essential for the proper functioning of the component. If a keypath is not installed correctly—for example, if a file has been deleted—Office reinstalls all the keypath resources associated with the component.

For example, the Equation Editor feature of Office consists of two components, each of which has a file designated as the keypath for that feature.

If you run the Detect and Repair command on the Help menu of an Office application, and Office finds that the file EQNEDT32.EXE is missing, it repairs the Global_Office_EquationEditor_1033 component by reinstalling all of the four files that are part of that component (EQNEDT32.EXE, EQNEDT32.CNT, EQNEDT32.HLP, MTEXTRA.TTF) as well as all of its registry entries.

A new spreadsheet, Office 2003 Keypaths.xls, is available now in the Office 2003 Resource Kit. This spreadsheet documents the keypaths for each Office feature, listing the feature name, component name and ID, the folder into which the component is installed, and the keypath associated with the component.

Toolbox  The Office 2003 Feature Keypaths spreadsheet is available as part of the self-extracting executable (Office_2003_Keypath_And_Default_Installation_Workbooks.exe) from the Microsoft Download Center.

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For more information about how to repair an Office installation, see Repairing Office 2003 Installations.