Hi all, hope you can help.



I've recently been having slightly crazy problems with my MS Office; my computer has the 64-bit Windows 7 and a pre-installed copy of Office 2010 working fine for ages and then suddenly when I opened a file be it Word, Excel or anything else, it was telling me that I'm using a trial version of Office 2007 and that I need to enter a product code because I only have so many 'trys' left.

When I looked in 'All Programs' my copy of 2010 was just gone so I dutifully re-installed it. As the belligerent trial copy of 2007 counted down to zero (every time I opened a file it insisted on opening it with 2007 even though 2010 was reinstalled and present), when it eventually ran out, I would open a file and be presented with read-only, limited functionality, etc.

I thought I'd gotten around this by uninstalling whatever this trial version of 2007 was (I've still no idea how it even got on my computer - any takers?) to the point where I open an existing Word file and I've got full functionality back. Then I tried the same thing with an existing Excel file and it didn't want to know - just a blank page where the spreadsheet should be. And yet if I create a new Excel file, it gives me the sheet you would expect to see - am I going slightly mad or is this not normal..??!!

Any help would be greatly appreciated =)

Hi Yomanchamcru,

Has anyone else had access to your PC? This is the kind of thing some service techs might do if they do some work on your system.

When you say office 2010 disappeared, did Office 2007 appear instead? If so, did you uninstall Office 2007 before reinstalling office 2010?

Have you checked for viruses & other rogue software? From your description, it's possible some trojan has hijacked your system.

As for the going mad bit, I can't comment ... The fact the PC's behaviour is abnormal doesn't give me enough information to diagnose your sanity (or lack thereof)!

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

Thanks, Macropod, much appreciated.

Actually that would make a lot of sense if it were Trojan-related, my hotmail got hacked for the first time ever in February and when I looked at the install date for 2007 (as I was uninstalling it), it said February. I ran a full scan at the time and, after a few password changes, thought I'd cleared everything up, but maybe not...

I reinstalled 2010 and then uninstalled 2007 (imagining it would just default to using 2010 instead of this silly trial 2007) - why, is there a significance to doing one before the other?

Am pretty sure I was going slightly mad anyway..!

Hi Yomanchamcru,

Yes, it can make a difference - you really should have uninstalled Office 2007 at or before the time you installed Office 2010. Uninstalling it later may compromise Office 2010 by deleting bits that are still needed.

You may be able to recover the full functionality by repairing Office 2010 (via Programs & Features in the Windows Control Panel). Otherwise, you may need to uninstall & re-install it.

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

Oh..!

Oh, well, I'll see if can repair it in control panel, then. Thanks again for the advice

Just repaired it in Control Panel, seems to be giving me full functionality, nice one!