Msocache is another of those “magical” directories (not a file) that somehow just appears one day. Since we’re not looking for this kind of thing constantly it’s easy to miss exactly when it showed up.
Here’s one clue, though – MSO stands for MicroSoft Office.
Yep. Microsoft Office is trying to be helpful.
First, Microsoft does have a Knowledgebase article on this, though thetitle’s not particularly helpful: LocalInstall Source (Msocache).
The bottom line is that it’s simple a local copy of Microsoft Office’sinstallation source. Put another way, it’s a copy of portions of the MicrosoftOffice installation CD. Why? so that you don’t have to insert the CD when youadd a feature, perform a repair operation, or install service packs andpatches.
Msocache is created, quoting the KB article:
…if the following conditions are true:
One of the available hard drives has more than 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of freedisk space available.The hard disk with sufficient space is not a removable drive or a networkdrive.
Personally that seems kind of arbitrary, but there ya go.
You can delete the folder, but, that same Knowledgebasearticle goes on to say, “Never delete the MSOCACHE folder by using MicrosoftWindows Explorer.” Why, I do not know. They suggest using the Windows DiskCleanup Wizard.
” ‘Never delete the MSOCACHE folder by using Microsoft Windows Explorer.’ Why, I do not know.”
Because you will hurt MicroSoft Office’s feelings.
I have used diskcleanup to get rid of MSOCache but it still remains. The dirs are actually on my H: drive. My other problem is all my attempts to update MS Office 2003 fail.
P.S. After all the above, manually delete your MSOCache folder in your Windows Explorer (despite Microsoft’s warning), then rerun your Registry Cleaner, which will find a few dozen new invalid entries in your Windows Registry. Delete those, and your problem is solved (hopefully …)
I use a little program called unlocker that is a freeware I got off the internet and deleted it with no problem!
The reason you should not just delete this file with windoze exploder is that it has registry entries pointing at it that will remain behind after the delete, and will bite you later.
Why keep the files if you have them? Windows update may/will fail with Office updates, probably other tools as well, if you delete the files without cleaning up the registry. I’m currently in that situtation. Even changing drive letters can affect if the auto-update finds the installation as being not intact; move your CD/DVD to drive Z:. It tries to open files where it thinks they should be and may conclude that the installation is corrupted and stop. In my case, I removed the default Acer laptop D: partition, single drive with two partitions, after I installed Office. Windows update will no longer auto-update Office. It fails for all updates. No going back in my case. Now I’m trying to find the correct registry entires to remove or blank contents to avoid this check from failing the update.
How about transferring the MSO Cache from the C to the D drive would it be better than deleting it.
I am planning the transfer the contents of the folder in that drive and is looking for comments from knowledgeable people. Looking forward to your valuable suggestions
Thanks!
You can just delete MSOCache folder if you have the installation CD around. The LISTool.exe just enables selectively deleting stuff from MSOCache folder.
Welllll…………..
i thought i would just drop to dos and erase my unneeded msocache folder hahaha
i typed “erase c:\msocache\*.* /s /f /q”
i am now reinstalling windows!!!!
I know you posted this article 7 years ago which seems like an eternity in the tech world but it still is timley. The MSOCACHE is still an issue. I wanted to add: The reason they ask you NOT to delete using Windows Explorer is because of all the path statemtents pointing to resources in the MSOCACHE. If you use the cleanup tool it will remove the pointers so that MS Office doesn’t try to use those resources when you add a feature to office, instead it will prompt you for the CD. And there you have it 🙂