Cannot install office 2013 Error "Microsoft office professional plus 2013 encountered an error during setup"

There are as many reasons as there are solutions. There is really no reason to keep fiddling with a botched installation. Not that you botch it, it botches itself! I have been fighting these wars since XP, and 2003. And sometimes, no scrubber works. In that case, I just save the data to a folder, or another drive, and go for the reinstall. I usually reformat the HDD, and start anew.

I have to thank you in return for the discussion because it is a very important one. I am not declining there are any issues with Office. In fact there are numerous threads like this one handling the same or similar issues. I've had the issue myself - that's why I found to comment it in the first line. In fact for me the solution was to run ALL available and suitable cleaners that Microsoft has in stock for the affected OS, so I've started with the Office 2007, then 2010 then the 2013 / 2016 cleanup tool in the order of release to get it fixed.

To be honest the ways how computer work or simply refuse to work are so numerous. Basically all that I can repeat is that in some circumstances it might be faster - especially since the appearence of Windows 10 - to reinstall or "refresh" the system instead of fiddling and searching for solutions for hours.

I find it hard myself to refuse to do that just because I am curious and want to learn what's the issue and how to solve it to appreciate people that found a solution or to find the logical solution myself, regardless if the time invested is really worth it or not. That said on my rig, Windows 10 is installed in about 5 minutes, which isn't the standard for anyone and which doesn't mean that I would simply throw anything aboard to skip around errors like this nasty Office installation bug.

The major problem since decades is that Microsoft is saving developing time for proper installation gauges - these might indicate more precisively when an installation fails and eventually also why, then they are cutting ressources to code proper error messages that are additionally well documented in the KBs. Yes of course there are logs but to be honest people simply don't love to browse megabyte sized ascii based logfiles.

Microsoft, however, isn't a lone sample of a developer doing so.

After all, - no offence - if anyone keeps failing to install Office despite having ran all the cleanup tools - I think it's better to start with a clean system instead of bothering with finding possible solutions.

Just yesterday I had one system where the Windows component store was so desperately bugged and destroyed that not even sfc or dism could repair it. There are many dependencies on this component store (WinSxS) also Office and Windows Updates or Store... if such things are damaged and cannot be repaired with usual tools it might be not worth to spent time on the matter any further.

Just my 2 cents.

p.s. I would also advice anyone to avoid inplace upgrades from an older version to a newer version like from 2007 to 2010 or 2010 to 2013 / 2016 but rather uninstall the old version and install the new one - eventually run the cleaners before.

The reason is that I had a lot of troubles with the migration of Outlook (non Exchange based) profiles and you would be surprised that Microsoft still does save these in a Windows NT 4.0 branch in the registry :), just in case you need to backup anything.

I don't know why this dude keeps sweatin' me about this. I have also had to, basically, reinstall Windows to get some MICROSOFT apps to install. As far as the "compatibility issue goes, I have installed MICROSOFT  software/apps, on some systems, using the compatibility mode install. Now, he may not have, and I respect that. But I, like you just did, have had to do reinstalls when Office 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016 into Windows XP, Vista, Vista Ultimate, 7, 7 Ultimate, 8, 8.1, and 10. I'm happy for those who have not had issues. But I have had an array of error messages, trying to install this stuff.

So, Heinz, God bless, and continue your success. But for some reason, you still failed to give a solution. I do, however, appreciate your extensive knowledge of "Compatibility mode". Thank you!

I've had this problem with Office 2013 and 2016

Even after running Microsoft's Office cleanup utility, I was still unable to install.

Eventually, I did a non-destructive re-install of Windows 10. That seemed to have fixed it.

because it is not an issue, we have even computers running Office 2010 or 2013 with Windows 10 or Windows 7. You don't need compatibility settings to make the Office installer work.

Well, I didn't think so, but having a Windows 10 computer running Windows 7, 8, 8.1 MICROSOFT apps, give problems. So you saying that it isn't an "issue", and the compatibility settings aren't necessary, then tell the man how to solve his problem. I still say try the "compatibility" mode. If what you're doing doesn't work, what's wrong with trying something else that might? Really?

Really :) First of all you should consider what this compatibility mode actually does and what it does not.

It's a technique to obfuscate the OS string and version so if enabled it will tell the installer hey I am Windows xxx because some installers have hardcoded version checks. In some cases it may also help to handle other issues that are version related like redirected folders (symbolic links) etc. etc. The number of these has grown over the past.

This said Office 2013 or 2010 do not have issues with Windows 10 by default. And additionally Windows 10 is able to obfuscate the OS string - and that was intentionally designed by Microsoft in Windows 10 code base to prevent compatibility issues - even without using the compatibility mode. I know of very very few apps that still need this old feature.