Microsoft has officially ended support for Office for Mac 2011 as scheduled, nearly seven years after the software suite was first released.

Before installing Office 2011 for Mac, find hard drive errors by using your Mac’s Disk Utility program. The Disk Utility can detect errors in system file permissions and verify the file structure. Using the Apple Disk Utility may sound rather technical, but it’s actually quite easy.

If you have a good disk maintenance and repair utility (such as Alsoft DiskWarrior, TechTools Pro, Drive Genius, or a similar program), be sure to use it on your startup volume and other drives before installing a big product such as Microsoft Office. At a minimum, make sure your startup disk verifies as OK with Apple’s Disk Utility program.

Here’s how to check your hard drive with Disk Utility:

1. In Finder, choose Applications→Utilities→Disk Utility Application.

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2. In the panel on the left side, select your startup disk.

   Your startup disk is the one at the top of the list of volumes. Select either the first or second item in the list.

3. On the First Aid tab, click the Verify Disk button.

   Progress update messages and a progress bar appear. The bigger your hard drive is and the more files you have, the longer Disk Utility will take.

4. When the process is complete, quit the Disk Utility application.

The message you hope to see when Disk Utility is finished is green and says, “The volume [name] appears to be OK.” Most likely you will get this go-ahead, and you can proceed directly to installing Office and skip the next steps.

If the Disk Utility indicates that your disk needs to be repaired, the Repair Disk button will remain grayed out, and you need to take additional actions.

You can find additional instructions by doing the following:

1. In Disk Utility, choose Help→Disk Utility Help.

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   The Disk Utility Help window displays.

2. Choose Repairing a Disk.

   Follow instructions for repairing your disk(s).

Sometimes Disk Utility can’t repair a disk. If that happens to you, don’t despair. Instead, try using another disk repair utility, such as Alsoft DiskWarrior, TechTools Pro, Drive Genius, or similar programs. They can find and repair more problems than Disk Utility can.

Don’t install Office until Disk Utility or another reliable maintenance and repair utility tells you that your startup disk appears to be okay. If your startup disk isn’t okay, Office may not run properly.