Microsoft Office 1612 error - How to fix it?

The 1612 error is caused by a problem with the installer of your system being unable to complete the installation of Microsoft Office (more specifically, when you try and install the SP-1 update to Office XP). This error specifically occurs when you have more than one stand-alone versions of Office installed on your PC, such as Microsoft Office Word XP or Microsoft Office Excel XP. The problem is that since the installer wants to update the entire Office suite, having standalone programs will confuse it, and stop it working.

The 1612 error normally shows in this format:

Error 1612. The installation source for this product is not available. Verify that the source exists and that you can access it.
The error basically means that if you're trying to install a program / piece of software onto your computer, it's not able to read the actual files it requires to proceed. Although this can happen for a number of reasons, the fact is that the 1612 error almost always occurs when you try and update Office XP to SP-1, and have multiple standalone Office programs installed. If you want to resolve this error, you should first look at ensuring that your Windows Installer program is working correctly, and that your setup of Office is working as well as it should.

The first step to resolving the 1612 error on your PC is to ensure that you use the "Windows Installer Cleanup" tool. This is an in-built Microsoft program which basically allows you to fix any problems that the Windows Installer might have on your system. By using this tool, you will basically fix the various errors that the Windows Installer has inside, allowing it to install the update on your PC. Unfortunately, this only works if the installation location for Office is corrupted - meaning that if you have various individual instances of Office programs installed onto your PC, you will need to proceed onto the next step.

If you try the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility and find it does not work, then you should look to uninstall the standalone versions of Office on your system, and replace them instead with a single installation. This can be done by clicking on Start > Control Panel > Add / Remove Programs and then removing the various installs you have of Word / Excel / Access on your system. After doing that, you should also use a "registry cleaner" tool to fix the various errors that could form on your PC after the uninstall.

You can fix 1612 error very easily by using the tutorial on our website. You can perform 1612 repair by using the tools and tutorial on our site.