Feb 022008
When you try to run windows update you might get error code 78F for office 2007 sp1 update
Solution 1
The ONLY thing that finally worked was to completely uninstall office 2007 and Reboot your pc.
Reinstall office 2007 and Reboot your pc.
Now you need to Update from the downloaded SP1 installer.
Run Windows Update to clear the entry in pending updates.
Those of you who have a disk, just bite the bullet and reinstall and prepare to recite numbers over the phone when you get dinged to reactivate your copy of office.
Solution 2
Place either a CD or DVD of office 2007 in the DVD drive before attempting to update Office 2007 with SP1.
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No need to reinstall Office.
From another source – found that any DVD will do so I updated my Office 2007 under Vista with a DVD of the Nutcracker Ballet in the drive!
This was an infuriating error for those with Office preloaded as in my case, and hence had no Office DVD or CD to try,and don’t know why Microsoft does not cover this problem in their own help pages.
Uninstalling and then re-installing Office was the only thing that worked for me! Previously I’d tried all the other suggestions thrown up by Google (such as having the disk in the drive when installing the update, disabling anti-virus etc), but this was the only thing that worked.
The download mentioned in this KB article worked for me. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946691. The actual file is here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=697BA2AA-0757-42C8-A530-5BD5566A54AD&displaylang=en&displaylang=en
The correct link to the microsoft article is without the dot at the end.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946691
Thanks for the help guys. Solved the problem for me.