I am officially an old guy. Old guys like things the way we like them.

<sigh> My beloved desktop is dying. It's had a good run, better than 12 years and it was fine until recently - motherboard is slowly crapping.

O.K. I buy a new desktop, Win 11, fancy processer with a whole bunch of cores, SSD, etc. Begin setup. I have a had a local copy of MS Office since 2007. Physical media and everything. Love it because M$ has no access to any of my "stuff" which became a big deal when HIPPA came to be. Even had the foresight to safely record the license numbers and the code for the CD's.

Now, something has decided that the license numbers and CD access codes I have are incorrect and will not install. Don't know if this is a Win 11 issue as I was able to install on my W10 laptop about a year ago.

<sigh> I hate change.

RMD

It seems like your version may be a bit out of date...

https://www.auslogics.com/en/a...other&text=You%20don't%20have%20to,apps%20like%20Outlook%20and%20Access

Sorry, that link doesn't work in the forum's url tag. Cut and paste it in your browsers address bar.

Microsoft has retired Office 2007, so no security fixes. I would suggest you just bite the bullet and buy a new license.

If you only need Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, Microsoft Office Home & Student 2021 is on sale now for $120. Office 365 would be another option for you, but you will get billed yearly for that.

https://www.amazon.com/Microso...ps%2C124&sr=8-2&th=1

If you want to throw caution to the wind you might be able to try this. I am assuming you have the product key. It's been a while but I have a copy of 2007 that I had installed on a few of my computers. At times it wouldn't install and I would call Microsoft's automated activation line. When you are going through the menu to install 2007, you should be prompted to activate the software by phone, something like this:



An automated voice will walk you through the menu and you should eventually be able to have them send you a link to your smart phone where you can enter your product key, and assuming the stars align, you will get a very long alpha numeric code to enter on your computer. I still have these numbers saved in my phone to call the activation line.

1 866 421 7141
1 888 725 1047

YMMV

I am thoroughly with Microsoft 365 or whatever it's called now. I have the annual subscription. But having said that, if your needs are minimal, there's either OpenOffice or LibreOffice.

Progress, will be the death of me.

I’ve been very happy with Libre office. I do experience a crash about 25% of the time when trying to add a text box in their presentation software; a minor issue overall. Other than that one issue it’s been very stable.

Easy to use, compatible with the MS office suite and it’s free.

https://www.libreoffice.org/

Silent

I gave Libre Office a try a few years ago. I mainly use Excel (Calc for Libre Office). Worked OK, but if I tried to send files to friends they couldn't open them as they didn't have Libre Office. Ok, I'll just save them in Excel format....then I lost all my formatting (colored cells). It would crash occasionally.

I also tried Thunderbird for email. Didn't like it.

I bit the bullet and went back to MS Office.

I figure I should get a few more years out of my Office 97.

I'm still using office 2003 on a bunch of computers.

Yeah, I'm using Office 2003 on Win10.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
Yeah, I'm using Office 2003 on Win10.

I'm doing the same in a virtual desktop on my Win10 machine. Also running Picture Publisher because it has the most intuitive operation of any image software I've ever tried. At work I am using Autocad 2000 in another virtual desktop because Autocad had gone lease only and the "improvements" between 2000 and 2024 are pretty minimal. Some of the bugs dating back to the latest version are still present.

Open Office suite is a good substitute. If you just want a word processor, WordPerfect is a far far superior product to anything Microsoft or anything else you can buy.

I use Word, Open Office Google Docs, Pages and WordPerfect. WordPerfect is better than all of them combined.

Thanks. Moving up the OS ladder certainly seems to suck for an old guy.

Thanks again,

RMD

quote:

Originally posted by Chowser:
I'm still using office 2003 on a bunch of computers.

My copy would not install on my ThinkPad.

https://www.openoffice.org/

Open source. Free. Does everything the Office suite does, and more importantly, isn't Microsoft.

Woot has several MSFT suites and OS on sale, MS Office Pro 2019 for $19.99, MS Office Pro 2021 for $34.99, they also have it for Mac and MS OS home or pro.

Link

Any chance the old licenses were for 32-bit versions? If so, they may not work on a 64-bit processor-based system, which is all that's out there these days - Win11 doesn't even come in a 32-bit version.

If that's not the issue, you may want to disconnect the machine from the network, reboot and try again. Sometimes the activation logic is different when not able to connect to the mothership.

If all else fails and you need to actually go get new software, before just going with knockoffs or freeware, check out prices for genuine MS licenses at Electronic First.

I don't know how they do it (my guess is they buy excess licenses from OEMs or other large companies who buy licenses in volume to get price breaks, but wind up not using them all?) but however they do it, the prices are crazy-good (like, Office Professional Plus 2021 for $15) and the licenses are valid and work fine.

You download the software itself from MS websites (they give you the link to the particular MS web page) then use your license info when activating.

I've done this for a couple years now, ever since a buddy who builds and maintains PCs for a living put me onto them.

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
Woot has several MSFT suites and OS on sale, MS Office Pro 2019 for $19.99, MS Office Pro 2021 for $34.99, they also have it for Mac and MS OS home or pro.

Link

I looked at the version for Mac, but as far as I can tell that version requires a Mac with Intel CPU, so it won't work with the more recent Macs tht have Apple silicon.