Category: Systems Analysis

Learnings from spending the evening troubleshooting Microsoft Office on a new MacBook

Carl Setzer
abstract apple art black and white

A friend of mine has one of the latest MacBook pros. It is a rather lovely machine! But it had a weird glitch when we tried to install Office. It threw this error:

“The installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance.”

A remarkably unhelpful message, if I say so myself. First guess: corrupted download file. So I deleted the pkg file (it’s the Mac software installation package), redownloaded it, attempted to reinstall it, and got the same error.

Ok, delete the pkg file again, empty the trash, rebooted, downloaded it again, started the installation, got the SAME error message. Now I’m puzzled. So, time to google it. And, bless the google gods, I found this quickly.

Solution for “The installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail”

I was a bit suspicious, though, when the answer was a link to another site.

Control access to files and folders on Mac

However, this was spot on. It was a rather simple issue. I needed to grant access to the download folder to the Installer. Just a few commands to enter and, boom, Office was able to install.

  1. Choose Apple menu
  2. System Settings, then click Privacy & Security
  3. In the sidebar. (You may need to scroll down) click Files and Folders.
  4. For each app in the list, turn the ability to access files and folders in specific locations on or off. In this case, “Installer”

I hope you don’t have this issue, but if you do, may this grant you peace after your frustrations.

Animated Navigation Bar: 50 Projects in 50 Days

Carl Setzer2 Comments
person encoding in laptop

Today we created an animated navigation bar with (mostly) CSS. I easily see a use case for this one, which makes it that much more fun.

You click on the “x” or the double line (depending on the view you’re in) to change the animation.

Besides growing my developer skills, I’m considering what work I should/could do in the near term. It’s going to be a bit before I feel ready to do coding interviews, much feel ready to jump into a production environment. But that’s not the only thing I can do with all that I’ve learned over the past few years.

My studies have covered a pretty broad swath of technology. Besides the keys to web development (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript), we also looked at JQuery and PHP. Stretching beyond the rudiments, we went pretty deep into databases (theory as well as design), system analysis and design, and project management (amongst other things). Also, I added some courses in Cisco Networking (the internet is a network, right?), desktop support (one more class then I will have a certificate in desktop support), and system architecture. Combining this with my pre-ATA career, I think this sets me up to be a great system analyst. I understand the technical side of things, and what business leaders want/need. I will do an excellent job bridging the gap between “business” and IT. Thus, I’m leaning that way in my job search.

What do you think? Any guidance you have to offer me as I transition? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Today’s Project: Input Form Wave

Carl Setzer

In today’s project, I created some animated text for a faux login form. I really enjoy the effect of this one when you click on the input fields.

Though I am really tired (it’s been a long few weeks), I’m pleased that I was able to fit this project into my evening. I really want to become a better coder, and coding is the only way to get there.

I want to fit in some review of project management and systems analysis. I’m quite confident that these will be important parts of my career’s next steps.