Microsoft office installation help?

[PeterH]

It's a cracking idea... but explain again how that's in their best interests when they can sell him a brand spanking new licence for £189 instead?

Because the software is still on the lost PC and Jonnie Sc*mbag is now potentially using it. If your car is stolen showing the manufacturer a photo of it does not mean they will give you a new one

 

[PeterH]

If it cost £20, then I'd generally wonder where it came from.

From what Gill said it is probably an online purchase direct from MS as a benefit of educational volume licensing. The cost sounds right. In the same way that many people could go the Home and Student route if they really wanted office and that component mix which licenses 3 copies per pack per year and even PC World, Tesco etc can sell you.

 

[Mark W]

MS home user for business user purchasers worked out at £18 for Office Pro, £18 for visio but the licence conditions were strict. One off purchase, no refunds, nor replacements. Once per product. The licence key was available online for a once only use, so if you cocked up the installation, lost the key, bought a new laptop, etc you didn't get a second chance until the product was upissued. You needed to register to get access to your personal licence key.

 

[dwardo]

I have to deal with Microshaft more often than i would like too and they simply dont give a "$£"$£"
They also have their OEM and re-seller agreements all sewn up tight so that they dont have to offer any assistance at all. I have had many an argument with them over OEM licensing and product registration and although i know i am going to loose i still have it out with them every time, just to take up someones time and wages for the day.
The long n short, no license no software, the disk its self is simply a media and not the software. These days you get a CD looking box and when you open it its simply a bit of card with a number on and the place where the CD used to be is empty, thety cant even be bothered to ship a disk anymore.
If your lucky you can sometimes pull the cd key from your PC if it was installed previously using an app called "Magic Jelly Bean" which will pull if from your registry.
Sometimes if you have the origional box with the CD key (not the activation key) proof of purchase you can maybe go through the company who sold it to you but to be honest good luck with that too, worked for me the once.
The way microshaft get away with not having to deal with you is the fact that they use "re-sellers" who are responsible for the support of the software so they will simply refer you to your re-seller who will simply forward you back to Mshaft. Its a great scam.
Dont forget too that the copy once installed is tied to that PC/Laptop, loose it or change the Motherboard/processor and you invalidate the OEM agreement, new copy of orafice time.
They then wonder why unscrupulous types easily download it illegally from places like http://thepiratebay.se/top/301

 

[Adze]

If your lucky you can sometimes pull the cd key from your PC if it was installed previously using an app called "Magic Jelly Bean"

There's a similar app called WinKeyFinder - which also makes my 5 year old (and inner 5 year old) laugh as it sounds like "Winky finder" when said out loud. Why do they have such risible names?

 

[sandbender]

"...If your lucky you can sometimes pull the cd key from your PC if it was installed previously using an app called "Magic Jelly Bean" which will pull if from your registry..."

My in laws, both pensioners and not very computer literate needed to do a clean install on their PC, the packaging had long since been lost, I used 'Magic Jelly Bean' to recover the keys for their copy of Office, Windows XP and I think it also found the one for their copy of Nero too. Does exactly what it said on the tin.

Not much use to Gill though if the software was never installed. I stand by my earlier recommendation to use Google docs instead, preferably after having installed the Chrome browser.

 

[ged]

The wife purchased this ages ago and it has sat and never been installed ,i tryed to do it tonight but it is asking for a product key number which i cant find i only have the disc ,I called microsoft and they said they could help do it but there would be a small fee £189 :yikes::yikes:.WHY ON EARTH? Can anybody help ?

It's nothing personal. The £189 is what Microsoft offered to do for me when I tried to get them to verify (not reinstall, not buy a new product key, just VERIFY) an existing installation after Office 2007 Professional threw a wobbly when my customer upgraded his computer. Windows and Office both look at the characteristics of the PC that they're running on and store some vital statistics. If you change more than about three things (e.g. upgrade disc, processor and memory) then it decides that you're trying it on and goes into 'reduced functionality' (more or less read-only) mode. That's what happened to my customer.

I should explain that I sold the copy of Microsoft Office to the customer in the first place, so I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was kosher, and Microsoft sold it to me in the first place, so they knew that too. But they still wanted the money to talk to me on the 'phone to re-eneable the copy of Office for my customer.

Now I've never been a Microsoft lover, but until then I'd never been particularly interested in downloading things found using search engines to look for "Office 2007 crack" or "keygen".

Of course I still couldn't condone such things.

Nowadays I try to run Windows on a virtual machine, then I can have complete control over what Windows and Office think they're running on even if the hardware changes from a 50MHz 486 to an eight-core 3GHz Opteron.

 

[Old Bones]

Ged - the daft thing is that I probably use no more of the Office functions (be it Word or Excel) than I did 20 years ago when I ran them on a 486 machine using floppies to install (20 disks did the whole lot, with no product key). The idea of going to a virtual machine sounds attractive, but its not for the amatuer.

My advice is still to always back up, and always write down every key/code you get. My Norton's is now supplied online, and when I had to reinstall XP, it was still the product code from the 2006 CD which allowed it reinstall the current version. Magic Jelly Bean sounds useful....