I have a family MS Office 2010 boxed DVD. How do the license keys work here? is the key is locked after 3 installs? Many thanks.

Hi ldrki,

Whenever you install Office and activate it, part of the activation process includes validating the installation with MS, via the internet. Each time the product is activated on a new PC, one of your licence entitlements is used. If you use all of them, you won't be able to activate the installation on another PC unless you contact MS and convince them that you are not exceeding your licence entitlements (eg you've replaced a PC and want to use the product on the new one instead).

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Is there a fee for contacting Microsoft for this type of call or is there a way just to lookup the product key on the PC? I am attempting a reinstall but this office has multiple discs that are not labeled. The previous tech did no labeling. Thanks

AFAIK, no fee is charged.

However, that's not going to help with your problem as the service relates to validating an installation for which you have the product key. With software that comes on a CD/DVD, product keys are not printed on the media, but on the cases in which they're supplied.

Products like MagicJellyBean KeyFinder (http://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/) can retrieve many product keys from current installations. If you've already started reinstalling, though, even that won't help/

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]