Updating Office 2011 on MAC

I have a Mac computer with office 2011 installed.

I receive regular updates but each time, I get the following message:

"These applications must be closed before the software can be installed:

Microsoft Database Daemon
SyncServicesAgent

These applications aren't on my tool bar at the bottom and when I locate them in applications and try to close them, they aren't open. What do I need to do.

rosie-bell said:

I have a Mac computer with office 2011 installed.

I receive regular updates but each time, I get the following message:

"These applications must be closed before the software can be installed:

Microsoft Database Daemon
SyncServicesAgent

These applications aren't on my tool bar at the bottom and when I locate them in applications and try to close them, they aren't open. What do I need to do.

Click to expand...

Those are background processes that you'll have to kill using Activity Monitor. Just open that up, find and select each of those, then select Quit Process from the menu.

It's rather odd that the installer can't do this on its own. *shrug* That's Microsoft for you.

It's rather odd that the installer can't do this on its own. *shrug* That's Microsoft for you.

Click to expand...

I agree but find it even more odd that those processes are running in the background. I've been doing MS updates for years from Office 2008 and now with Office 2011 and have never experienced the message she's seeing. On occasion the installer will tell me to shut down Word, Powerpoint, or even the updater, but never the two she was told to shut down.

They may be running in the background because one of the Applications in Office crashed but left them running sometime in the past. I've seen that happen before.

installing office 2011 updates

Its incredibly irritating to receive the message one should update Office for Mac, then finally receive the message one should close these mysterious programms which are impossible to find. So I start up in safe mode (keeping the shift-key down when restarting) but then its a whole effing hassle to find the update-alert again. How stupid and user unfriendly can one get?

lifeisabeach said:

Those are background processes that you'll have to kill using Activity Monitor. Just open that up, find and select each of those, then select Quit Process from the menu.

It's rather odd that the installer can't do this on its own. *shrug* That's Microsoft for you.

Click to expand...

No need to open in Safe mode. Just use Activity Monitor to quit those applications.

Something is not quite right. Used Office since before OS X days and have never observed that before.

I'm no expert on Office, but I'd bet my bottom dollar that the OP is not properly quitting the apps and is instead "closing" them, leaving processes running when trying to update. Or that there are background processes for certain Office functions (like handing incoming invitations or updating calendars etc) that are again left running because the original application wasn't actually quit.

Try making sure Office is *completely quit* and then run the Office Updater and see if the problem disappears.

Suggested solution not quite working

I actually tried the option to kill SyncServicesAgent.app in Activity Monitor but this has not worked. As soon as a process is killed, a new one is created (see attached).

Anyone know how to get around this?

Thanks in advance!

You have to ensure that ALL Office apps are properly closed, not just WORD / PPT / XLS, but all other MS Apps as well. Then you can kill the processes in Activity Monitor.
Also have a look here https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3928408?start=15&tstart=0

Let us know how you get on.

Cheers ... McBie

Fixed

Thanks for the help McBie. Looking at the other thread helped solve the issue, as going offline did the trick for me too!