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Newer Version of MS Office

Anonymous
2022-12-18T11:09:44+00:00

Hey all, I have been using Office 2003 for almost 20 years. Until recently it has never caused me any problems, and has been very reliable and consistent for me. I just purchased a new HP Omen gaming laptop about 9 months ago, and Word was mostly fine, but in the past couple of months has become a problem. I have been plagued by Intermittent freezes of Word documents, and in one instance, I lost two open documents when I force closed the program about a month ago, and in desperation, I had to get a recovery program to get most of my data back, but it was a nightmare. Someone recommended Agent Ransack, which was awesome.

Anyway, Word seems to work almost fine, but there is one serious problem plaguing me. When I try and cut and paste a segment of a document, CTRL-C works fine, but the moment I try paste it to another location, such as moving paragraphs around, it causes an immediate freeze of MSWord. Now I discovered anecdotally that if I wait for anywhere between 5 and 10 minutes the program will un-freeze, but obviously this is untenable. Also I noticed that very often when I am typing, the text on the screen can almost, but not quite, keep up with me. So there seems to be some input lag that I don't get with any other text based programs.

Oh, and I can no longer open new .xls documents with Excel, so I have been using OpenOffice, but it is a PITA since I have to recover every document every time I use it for some reason, even if I have opened the same spreadsheet ten times.

I really like some of the programs in Office, and I certainly don't mind buying my software, but I refuse to pay a monthly/yearly subscription price for the program, as I am not using functions that require business or cloud based functionality. I am a novelist and I sometimes use Word for business as a chiropractor for initial exam templates and such. I use MS Publisher, which the 2003 Office version still works fine for some reason. But I am willing to pay for Office, and it looks like I can buy an unfortunate 1-device license only, unlike the older MS Office versions. Is there a way to fix my current version of Office 2003, or am I just better off buying the 2021 Office Lifetime license? I hate that it is only one device, particularly since I have one laptop at the moment, but I upgrade my gaming laptop and gaming desktop every few years, which means that I now have to buy a copy of the software for my Desktop PC when I build one next year as well as every time I buy or upgrade any PC I own.

Any advice on how to mitigate the costs of this? I don't mind paying for my software, even though I have no need of 95% of the MS Office functions, but it seems a little daunting to have to buy a license every time I upgrade both laptop or desktop.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Suzanne S Barnhill 278K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2022-12-21T13:33:19+00:00

    Yes, clearly they make money when people buy products through their articles and links, and since you brought up Amazon, I trust them as well. Seriously, I cannot fathom Amazon or CNET allowing sketchy or dubiously legal software to be sold on their site, as is the case of Amazon, or through a portal from their site, as in the case of CNET.

    It has recently been in the news that Amazon is having a lot of trouble with third-party sellers offering knock-offs of premium brands. Some of these brands have refused to sell through Amazon. Attempts to crack down and certify products have been hit-or-miss.

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  2. Charles Kenyon 167.6K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2022-12-20T21:32:39+00:00

    I am not advocating for Microsoft.

    The Pro Plus Office software is legitimate. The Product Key is legitimate. People selling the Product Key on the internet are doing so in contravention of the licence. The big clue is they sell Pro Plus at a something like $40 £40 when the nearest perpetual Office is Office Professional 2021 which Microsoft sells for about £400 $400. As I have said it is pot luck some Pro Plus Offices will last for a long time some a short time and some do not work at all. I have never heard of Microsoft taking any legal action against the sellers of Pro Plus and certainly not against any users. It would near hand impossible to take any legal action against users.

    RonBarker, I wasn't suggesting that you are some kind of a shill for MS. I actually confused members, and thought you were an MS Moderator, Admin, or CM. My apologies if I unintentionally made it sound like you were acting like some sort of a corporate shill.

    I am still finding this all very confusing, regarding why CNET would link to a site that is hawking "illegitimate" software, and why MS is allowing this to stand. If this company is selling illegitimate software, that is illegal, and I am trying to suss out why MS would allow it. Surely they have a top notch legal department to stop sales of their IP that are illegitimate?

    It is confusing, yes.

    Buyer beware.

    If you want to be sure that Microsoft will be happy with your purchase. Buy directly from Microsoft.

    CNET is doing this because they earn money by doing it. No one here can tell you whether it is legitimate.

    I've seen Office Pro at a ridiculous price on Amazon as well.

    I have never heard of any user being sued for buying and using a volume license. I have heard of users that do lose the money they spent. They do not lose their documents or work.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-12-20T20:48:37+00:00

    I am not advocating for Microsoft. The Pro Plus Office software is legitimate. The Product Key is legitimate. People selling the Product Key on the internet are doing so in contravention of the licence. The big clue is they sell Pro Plus at a something like $40 £40 when the nearest perpetual Office is Office Professional 2021 which Microsoft sells for about £400 $400. As I have said it is pot luck some Pro Plus Offices will last for a long time some a short time and some do not work at all. I have never heard of Microsoft taking any legal action against the sellers of Pro Plus and certainly not against any users. It would near hand impossible to take any legal action against users.

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  4. Suzanne S Barnhill 278K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2022-12-18T13:06:32+00:00

    First, you must understand that every office installation you buy be it 2003 is meant for one device only. Even if you could install it on others, you were doing it against the EULA agreement which you and Microsoft have.

    This is actually not true; earlier versions of Word did permit installation on more than one device--usually one desktop and one laptop. This is the EULA from Word 2003:

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  5. Suzanne S Barnhill 278K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2022-12-18T13:01:36+00:00

    I have been using Word 2003 for years on Windows 10 without incident. I have not tried installing it on Windows 11, but I would expect success there as well.

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