locked out

[Lyndsey]

Help! I just bought a new computer, and have had it less than three weeks.
It came with a 60 day trial version of 2007 Office. I cannot use Word
starting today. It will only let me open files, and says the selection is
locked. Does this mean my trial is up? It hasn't been 60 days!
Also, I have Office 2003 on my old laptop which I will not be using anymore.
Is there any way to just switch the Office programs from that computer to my
new one? The new one is a netbook, so I don't have an optical drive.
Can anyone help me?
Thanks!!

 

[Jay Freedman]

Help! I just bought a new computer, and have had it less than three weeks.
It came with a 60 day trial version of 2007 Office. I cannot use Word
starting today. It will only let me open files, and says the selection is
locked. Does this mean my trial is up? It hasn't been 60 days!
Also, I have Office 2003 on my old laptop which I will not be using anymore.
Is there any way to just switch the Office programs from that computer to my
new one? The new one is a netbook, so I don't have an optical drive.
Can anyone help me?
Thanks!!

I can't tell you what the problem is with the trial of Office 2007,
although I suspect that the computer vendor is to blame, and you can
try complaining to them.

If your Office 2003 is a retail (separately purchased) copy and not
one that was bundled with the old computer (called an "OEM" version),
then you can uninstall it from the old computer and install it on the
new one. You'll need the installation disk and the product key that
came with it; there's no way to simply move an installed copy of
Office from one computer to the other.

To work around the lack of an optical drive, there are a couple of
methods:

- If you have a network router and can connect the two computers
through the network, you can share the optical drive of the old
computer, map it on the new computer, and install across the network.

- Alternatively, after mapping the optical drive, copy the entire
contents of the disk to a folder (and subfolders) on the netbook's
hard drive. Run the setup.exe program in that folder.

- You can copy the entire contents of the disk to a USB stick, move
the stick to the netbook, and start setup.exe from there.