My installation of Office 2008 under OS X automatically updated earlier today and seemed to break itself quite spectacularly. After the update had installed, any of the applications on the suite refused to start, instead automatically starting the installer for the update again, and then trying to check for updates.

The way around this is to make sure you've got your serial number, then delete the following files:

rm ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office\ 2008/Microsoft\ Office\ 2008\ Settings.plist rm /Applications/Microsoft\ Office\ 2008/Office/OfficePID.plist

After this, click on one of the applications that are part of the Office suite, it'll take you through the registration (asking for your serial) and then that's it - sorted.