New Office

[RJ_Paton]

There are two main choices regarding  Office  now
MS Office - which is the stand alone version and
Office 365 - which is the subscription version (the price varies depending upon your choices but a personal version is available for £6 per month or £60 a year - direct from Microsoft)

The stand alone version has the advantage of no further payments once you've made that initial investment.
The subscription version has the advantage that it is always the latest version available and even if you stop the subscription the program acts as a viewer for your documents. The downside of course is that monthly subscription.

[Pennines]

Oh dear - decisions are not my strong point! (Don't think I have any strong point actually).

I'll probably purchase one - I don't want it to keep getting updated. I'm just concerned about my existing records - but apparantly I have 28 days left now to sort it out.

[locksmith]

If Office is still on it, all one as to do is look up the Product key for it via Search.

Same place as changing product key.

I'm not sure what you mean here. It is not just freely sitting around to be found. As I said before the Office product Key is encrypted in the registry but you can extract it with 3rd party software. I have just done so with my Office 2010 just to see if was possible and successfully obtained it.

Simon

[hallmark]

Haven't used MS Office for about 10 years but from memory it was very simple and easy to find....

Also, if it was installed when bought the sticker was very often put on tower.

[locksmith]

Haven't used MS Office for about 10 years but from memory it was very simple and easy to find....

No, its's always been encrypted in the registry. Tools are required to extract it even back to Office 2003 or even Office XP.

Simon

[Pheno]

What about Open Office which is free and works with Word and Excel with hardly any differences?

Pheno

[hallmark]

Haven't used MS Office for about 10 years but from memory it was very simple and easy to find....

No, its's always been encrypted in the registry. Tools are required to extract it even back to Office 2003 or even Office XP.

Simon

I had Office and it was always easy to find Product key for it... I think it was by going Change Product Key, which one would use if installing a clean Version on a Computer if other was corrupted.

[locksmith]

Haven't used MS Office for about 10 years but from memory it was very simple and easy to find....

No, its's always been encrypted in the registry. Tools are required to extract it even back to Office 2003 or even Office XP.

Simon

I had Office and it was always easy to find Product key for it... I think it was by going Change Product Key, which one would use if installing a clean Version on a Computer if other was corrupted.

What you are possibly remembering is the twenty character Product-Id, which you can see in the same place as the Change Product Key link that you mention. You use this to Activate Office. The Product Key is and always has been manually entered and encrypted in the registry and has never been visible and has only ever been extractable with 3rd party software.

Simon