[Moderator note: It is bad form to switch topics in the middle of a thread. I've created a new thread for this one from the original.]

I was encouraged by Purfleet's comment that older versions of Word could be run under Windows 10. So I decided to try installing the old Word version, the one with the macro that opens my task management files side-by-side in single Word window.

I happened to notice that that old version of Word, which I had posted about here as Word 97, actually turned out to be Word 2003. So I dug around in my carboard box of old software and found Office 2003.

I popped the CD (or is it a DVD?) into the DVD drive, closed the drive and waited for something to happen. But nothing did.

So I looked at File Explorer and clicked on a folder named "Setup."

Then the hard drive light came on and the disk drive started grinding and rattling and sounding like it was grinding the CD down to a pile of dust. That's when I realized that I had never actually ever gotten around to testing out the DVD drive on this refurbished PC. I'd been too distracted by just trying to find my way around in Windows 10 and Office 2010.

I was afraid to open the disk drive, out of fear that that might interrupt an attempted installation process and leave an unrecoverable mess on my hard drive. So I just let it run, hoping that it would eventually stop clattering away. It took quite a while, but finally it did stop. And while I was waiting for it to stop I noticed a little pop up in the lower right corner of the screen saying something like "Windows Installer needs to restart computer."

That's when I belatedly decided to Google "Can I install two versions of Word on the same computer" and found a page where it said:

Uh oh! My PC already has Office 2010 installed, so what's going to happen when I restart my PC? Is it going to make a can of worms out of the two versions of Office?



I'm going to leave the PC turned on, but not restart it until I find out if there's a way to safely proceed, or else to safely back out of this predicament.