Can you uninstall an upgrade?

[David B]

I have Office XP on my computer at work which was installed at purchase. I do
not have the reinstallation CD or product access keys. I was having issues
with opening a Works document, and the Word converter program wanted my CD to
install the necessary files. Since I didn't have it, I exited and borrowed a
coworkers Office 2003 installation CD. I ended up installing the upgrade,
converting it to Office 2003. However, I went to register the software and
was told by the software that there were no more uses to that product access
code. I now have about 30 more uses of the software before I will get limited
use out of Office 2003. Is there a way I can uninstall the Office 2003
upgrade and end up with the Office XP that was installed on my computer
originally.

 

[LVTravel]

I have Office XP on my computer at work which was installed at purchase. I
do
not have the reinstallation CD or product access keys. I was having issues
with opening a Works document, and the Word converter program wanted my CD
to
install the necessary files. Since I didn't have it, I exited and borrowed
a
coworkers Office 2003 installation CD. I ended up installing the upgrade,
converting it to Office 2003. However, I went to register the software and
was told by the software that there were no more uses to that product
access
code. I now have about 30 more uses of the software before I will get
limited
use out of Office 2003. Is there a way I can uninstall the Office 2003
upgrade and end up with the Office XP that was installed on my computer
originally.

That totally depends on how you installed 2003. If you allowed it to
overwrite the XP software you are going to be stuck. Once the 2003 reverts
to a file viewer program (you will be able to open and print files with all
the programs but you won't be able to modify or save them) you would have to
uninstall the '03 software. Since you don't have the '02 (XP) software
disk you won't be able to reinstall it.

If you installed without overwriting (a parallel install) Office XP should
still be accessible but the shortcuts may have disappeared. Check Program
Files/Microsoft Office/Office 10 and see if you have WinWord.exe, Excel.exe
and Powerpnt.exe files. If so they are the executables for Office XP.
Create shortcuts for those files and whatever other programs you need from
XP.

If you can't find the Office CD to reinstall, and you don't want to purchase
Office 2003 or 2007, I recommend downloading Open Office,
www.openoffice.org It is a free clone of most of the Office suite programs
and will open most Office data files without problems.