Microsoft Office problem

[bobmac]

I have a friend who has a Dell laptop that is 15 years old (Vista) and full of junk so I showed him how to wipe everything and reset it to as it was when new.
All went well untill we reinstalled his documents as Microsoft Word had disappeared.
He has the Office discs but cant find the product key to reinstall it.
Is there anything I can do to help him?
Thanks for any advice

 

[Which tree did that hit]

What version of office was it? If it was 2010 or earlier then it will be stored on his laptop still (unless it has been wiped with the restore which can happen) and there are free programs that will search for it on the system and hopefully recover it.

If it was a post 2010 version then the whole key is no longer stored on the system and as far as I know there is no way of recovering. It is a case of finding the hard copy (also should be on receipt from when he purchased it) or buying a new version.

 

[PhilTheFragger]

Normally the key code is on the packaging the disks come in, unless it's a dodgy set of discs.
If you had realised before you could have used a program called Belarc Advisor to find out the codes for all software on the machine.

But without it you are stuffed, you can't buy office 2016 as it won't work on vista.
Your only option is to scour eBay for a copy of office 2003 and when installed google "office compatibility pack" it's a 37mb download that will allow the newer .docx documents to work with the older .doc documents.

Or you just google "open office" and download Ability open office coz that's probably all you need.

Vista ............ really..........

 

[bobmac]

Thanks for that, ps he likes Vista lol

 

[PhilTheFragger]

Where is the dinosaur emoji when you want one.

Vista is a dawg, a bigger pile of poop you could ever imagine, it's only redeeming feature was that it introduced the system restore feature.

Give me XP or 7 ( although 10 is fine with classic shell)

Good luck, 👍😎

 

[bobmac]

I found a few Office 2003 on ebay with product keys, are these worth a go or are they likely to be iffy?

 

[Crazyface]

I found a few Office 2003 on ebay with product keys, are these worth a go or are they likely to be iffy?

Buy them and find out.

 

[bobmac]

Buy them and find out.

What, all of them?

 

[fundy]

Bob

Would Office 2007 work? if so Ive a disc/product key you can have somewhere i think thats not being used anywhere else

 

[bobmac]

Bob

Would Office 2007 work? if so Ive a disc/product key you can have somewhere i think thats not being used anywhere else

Thanks very much for the offer.
I've just bought one off Ebay so we'll see if that works and if it doesn't I may well take you up on that offer :thup:

 

[jim8flog]

Bob

Would Office 2007 work? if so Ive a disc/product key you can have somewhere i think thats not being used anywhere else

2007 works with vista. It does interest me that they are still using vista because I cannot get IE or Chrome to work with it on an old lappie. Chrome will not update and a lot of 'programs' just keep telling me to update eg I cannot watch Sky on it.

 

[bobmac]

My mate only uses the laptop for admin in a village hall committee, minutes, meetings, letters etc.
Good to know that Office 2007 works with Vista thanks Jim8flog