12-14-2010, 11:33 PM

Anyone have a solution to this SyncServiceAgent. app?

It will not quit and it halts me form re-installing Office for Mac.

very frustrating....

12-15-2010, 01:01 AM

Open Finder, then applications, then utilities then open the Activity Monitor.
Now you can find the sync services agent in the list and quit it – viola the install will now continue!

06-28-2011, 01:36 PM

The provided answer does not address the fact that SyncServicesAgent starts itself right up again after quitting it in the Activity Monitor.

I've no clue how to use terminal... and seriously don't want to restart the computer for this, which are options I've found in other forums.

Here's the very-low-techie solution I've found works best:

(1) Open Finder/Applications/Microsoft Office 2011/Office
(2) Drag SyncServicesAgent.app to the desktop (this keeps it from restarting!)
(3) THEN open Finder/Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app
(4) Find SyncServicesAgent in the list and quit it.
(5) Click the Continue button on the installer pop-up.
(6) When the application finishes installing, drag SyncServicesAgent.app back to Finder/Applications/Microsoft Office 2011/Office

07-03-2011, 04:21 PM

Thanks for your suggestion. It was simple enough to do and it worked. However, I can't seem to drag syncs services agent back into the office folder. If I click on the icon from my desktop, the applications folder disappears. I can't seem to copy and paste it either. How do I get it back where it belongs?

07-03-2011, 07:26 PM

Open Finder and expand the Applications folder so that it shows all your applications. You can either use icon or list view. List view is easier to work with.

Now, further expand the MS Office 2011 folder so that it opens. Look for the "Office" sub folder. Keep it in sight.... drag the Sync Services Agent.app and place it on top of the "Office" sub folder and drop it there.

You're done.

07-04-2011, 12:55 PM

That was super easy! Thank you so much!

07-15-2011, 10:52 AM

Thanks to NonnieT and chscag for posting the perfect solution to this puzzle

01-28-2012, 10:13 AM

None of these worked for me. As soon as I moved SyncServicesAgent.app onto the desktop, it seemed to regnerate itself in the original folder. I even resorted to moving the file into Trash, to no avail.

What did allow the new instal to continue, was renaming the file SyncServicesAgent.app. I was prompted to confirm whether I wanted to change the name of a file in use, which I did. It stopped that application running, and allowed the instal to continue. Office installer then told me I had reinstalled Outlook successfully, so things looked good at that point. It created a new SyncServicesAgent file.

However, upon trying to launch Outlook, I got nothing but crash logs and succeeded eventually only by restoring a functioning instance of Outlook from Time Machine (which had previously been unsuccessful several times before trying to instal from the CD.)

Still haven't got my data back in, which is proving problematic since the most recent Time Machine backups have disappeared from the timeline since I first started this adventure, but I'm now closer than I was.

Hope this may be a useful addition to the knowledge bank on this topic. In short, Activity Monitor alone isn't an answer, but moving SyncServicesAgent.app to the desktop isn't foolproof either.