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G4User

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 18, 2005
5
0
I plan on reinstalling Panther soon, to make my future Tiger installation easier. I have the Mic. Office Student edition w/ product key and I just wanted to make sure I would be able to install it again and the key won't be void or something. I will be able to use it right? Any help would be appreciated.
 

ftaok

macrumors 603
Jan 23, 2002
6,491
1,573
East Coast
G4User said:
I plan on reinstalling Panther soon, to make my future Tiger installation easier. I have the Mic. Office Student edition w/ product key and I just wanted to make sure I would be able to install it again and the key won't be void or something. I will be able to use it right? Any help would be appreciated.
Good question. I would expect that the key will still work, but who knows with MSFT's activation policy.

Here's what I would do. Burn your entire Microsoft Office folder onto a CD. Then if the key doesn't work after you've installed Tiger, you could trash Office and load it back up from the CD-R. The copy of Office on the CD-R should retain the activation.

Keep in mind, you should not let this CD out of your possession. If anyone should get a hold of it, they'll have an active copy of Office with your name on it. Don't know if you'd get in trouble if it showed up on a P2P network, but why tempt fate.

ft
 

G4User

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 18, 2005
5
0
Thanks for the idea, I will definitely try that when I reinstall. I'll break the CD up after I'm finished with it.
 

ftaok

macrumors 603
Jan 23, 2002
6,491
1,573
East Coast
wordmunger said:
Doesn't the license entitle you to install it on up to three computers? I doubt it wouldn't work.
You're right, the license does allow for 3 computers, however, with all of the furor over how WinXP does the licensing/activation, you never know if you'd be able to re-use one of the 3 keys.

I think we'd all agree that you should be able to, considering it's the same comptuer and all, but maybe the activation process will deem the upgrade from Panther to Tiger to be a new computer and therefore want a different key.

In any event, it'll only cost you one CD-R and about 10 minutes to burn the Office Folder as a "just in case".

ft
 

Macky-Mac

macrumors 68040
May 18, 2004
3,703
2,795
a friend bought the student/teacher edition of Office recently and if I recall correctly, there isn't any activation.....you enter the product key number just like earlier versions of Microsofts Mac products but you don't do an "activation" like windows users do with XP
 

G4User

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 18, 2005
5
0
IJ Reilly said:
How does reinstalling Panther make your Tiger installation easier?

Just so I dont have any freeware or third party shoftware that could affect the installation process.
 

IJ Reilly

macrumors P6
Jul 16, 2002
17,909
1,496
Palookaville
G4User said:
Just so I dont have any freeware or third party shoftware that could affect the installation process.

They won't, unless maybe if you've been fooling with exotic stuff that hack the kernel.
 

Nermal

Moderator
Staff member
Dec 7, 2002
21,011
4,590
New Zealand
G4User said:
I plan on reinstalling Panther soon, to make my future Tiger installation easier. I have the Mic. Office Student edition w/ product key and I just wanted to make sure I would be able to install it again and the key won't be void or something. I will be able to use it right? Any help would be appreciated.

OK, the educational licence allows you to install on three computers, which is why they give you three keys. Use the same code as before and it'll work fine.
 

osprey76

macrumors 6502
May 3, 2004
300
0
Oklahoma City, OK
ftaok said:
Good question. I would expect that the key will still work, but who knows with MSFT's activation policy.

Here's what I would do. Burn your entire Microsoft Office folder onto a CD. Then if the key doesn't work after you've installed Tiger, you could trash Office and load it back up from the CD-R. The copy of Office on the CD-R should retain the activation.

Reinstalling it and using your key again will be fine. There aren't hoops to jump through like with reinstalling WinXP too often.

The preferences files are not stored in the MS Office folder. All your copy will contain is the same things as on the installation CD. Your preferences, which may be nice to save for your settings, are found in two places:

~/Library/Preferences/
~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft

(~/ is your Home folder)

Also, to make your life much easier, just use the Archive and Install option on Tiger's installation DVD. It renames your old System folder and gives you a fresh installation of Tiger. It also preserves your settings and users if you leave that option checked.
 
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