MS Office questions

A lady I know has Office2003 installed, and out of the blue it's now asking for activation about 2 or 3 months after it was installed. She says she didn't install it and is assuming her teenagers installed it. Anyway- it will not activate over the internet, and calling the activation hot line results in a "the product ID cannot be recognized as a valid Microsoft product... blah blah blah". So I think it's bootlegged with a pirated or keygen'd key. No good. So Office03 will still open documents, they just cannot be edited. I have installed OxygenOpenOffice, and that is working OK. The lady does have an Office 2000 disc and product key sticker that she found buried in her "computer drawer". Will it open the Office 03 docs? Will it possibly corrupt them? Should I remove Office03 before installing Office2000?
Thanks.

 

This might help with formats if there is a problem - Compatibility pack.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...F0-70E5-4595-8A98-370278F40C57&displaylang=en

OpenOffice should not be an issue with the install of MS Office, but I would look and stop any OOO processes just to be safe. Should be able to convert the docs okay...as with all conversions might not be exact, pack might help a lot.

And of course as Halo said back-up her docs.

 

>> The lady does have an Office 2000 disc and product key sticker that she found buried in her "computer drawer". Will it open the Office 03 docs? dlb <<

Ditto to everything Halo posted; in particular the part about making absolutely sure to create a backup of all of the Office files currently on the computer to either a CD or DVD (or to an external drive) prior to removing Microsoft Office 2003 and then installing Office 2000.

I've actually done this exact same 2003 to 2000 migration procedure several times for people who tried Office 2003 and did not like the new interface and wanted to go back to Office 2000. In my experience troubles are extremely rare while performing this Office 2003 to Office 2000 migration procedure. But uninstall/reinstallation problems are still possible and can be downright devastating without having an up-to-date backup of all of your Microsoft Office files (should something go very wrong).

>> Will it possibly corrupt them? <<

Since the Office 2003 which is currently installed came from "who knows where" file corruption is at least remotely possible; but I seriously doubt there will be problems.

While there are some differences regarding feature compatibility* between Office 2000 and Office 2003 the vast majority of 'casual users' who do not make tons of additional formatting changes while creating Microsoft Office documents should hardly notice any difference at all after this migration to 2000.

>> Should I remove Office 03 before installing Office 2000 <<

I would most definitely uninstall 2003 FIRST before installing 2000, particularly since the Microsoft Office 2003 that is installed on this lady’s computer at least appears to be "suspect."

*Note: The following link deatals the Feature compatibility between Office 2000 and Office 2003

Good Luck!

 

:dood You guys rock! Thanks so much! :dancer

I would just remove Office03 and leave it with the OxygenOpenOffice, but she is kind of tightly wound, and not real open to change, so Office 2000 is pretty much required at this point. If her word docs suddenly didn't have a blue W on them, the freekin' sky would fall!
Thanks again guys. :major