Office RTM Product Key Issue Update

Ben Walters — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 01:31:02 GMT

As you may recall earlier this week I upgraded my laptop to the Office 2007 RTM, however I ran into an issue with the product keys that were issued to me via the MSDN subscriber downloads (see previous Post for details). I'm happy to say I got some feedback from the MSDN team via my MVP contact on this issue (see below)

"Office 2007 Product Keys from Subscriber Downloads

Many Office 2007 applications were recently posted to Subscriber Downloads, however a unique product key was not posted for each product. Although these product keys are worth several activations, once a product key is used to activate a particular Office application, it can only be used to activate additional installations of the same application. For example, a single key was posted for Office Project 2007 and Office Visio 2007, however once the product key is used to activate an Office Project 2007 installation, it can only be used to activate other Office Project 2007 installations.

Additional product keys are expected to made available from the Subscriber Downloads' Product Keys page on Tuesday November 21^st, 2006. When the additional product keys are posted:"

With this in mind I think I'll wait the couple of extra days before attempting to install Visio or OneNote after I get the Vista RTM installed.

Office TR -> RTM Install

Ben Walters — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 21:56:00 GMT

So as you may have read yesterday I was heading home to download Office 2007 RTM and get it up and running.

I'm happy to say I've come through the experience pretty much unscathed, after finally getting the program suite down and burning it to disc I was ready to go.

Now because this is an RTM and not just an upgrade from TR I had to uninstall all my existing Office 2007 programs including the beta of VSTO (still haven't got to installing that yet). Anyway once I had my old version of Office taken care of it was simply a matter of running the install and following the bouncing ball.

At present MSDN has the office programs broken up into 2 categories (at least on my Professional subscription anyway)

The Office Professional product suite which contains Access, Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher and Word.
Office Desktop programs, which contains all the other client applications for office so InfoPath, OneNote, Groove, Visio and Project Professional (no SharePoint designer however I suspect this will be released when MOSS goes RTM)

There is one problem I have run into however, as part of my MSDN subscription I have been provided 2 product keys 1 for the Office Professional Install and one for the remaining desktop programs. Originally I didn't think to much of this however I installed InfoPath (first of the remaining desktop programs) then installed OneNote, each with the same product key. Naturally I activated InfoPath first when I went to activate OneNote I was told that the product key I had used had already been activated.

After going through the phone activation process I found out that I'm going to have to activate each of the remaining products Visio, Groove, Project Professional via the same process. This seems like a bit of stuff up as there are a lot of people out there who will be wanting to get their Office 2007 RTM up and running and to have to call to get each product activated is going to slow the process down considerably.

I've also sent a mail to a couple of internal people at MS to see if there is anything being done about this so I'll keep you posted.

So bar the noted activation issues the install was reasonably hassle free and I was up and running with in an hour or so. Although I'm now a little worried that when the Vista RTM is released in the next couple of weeks I'm going to have to put a couple of hours aside to call the office phone activation service.

Now because my ability to segway into other topics is really bad I'm now going to jump straight in and plug the L.O.V.E tour taking place at Crown tomorrow. This is where Microsoft will be doing their Melbourne Launch of Office Vista and Exchange.

This should be a great day with lots of chances to see the new product suite up close and personal. If you haven't had a chance to check out the beta's then I would recommend heading down. Plus both Ed Richard and myself will be there pressing the flesh and getting the MOSSIG name known throughout the office community. I'll have my trusty Vista Laptop with me running Office 2007, as well as my WACOM Tablet so feel free to drop by and check it out.

Finally MOSSIG will be meeting tomorrow night at Microsoft's new Diggs in Southbank 4 lvl5 Freshwater place 6:30pm.

We have Alex Angus a work colleague of mine presenting some of the new features of Project Server 2007 this should be great having done a little work with Project Server it would be good to see what's changed.

Ed Richard will also be showing off VSTO 2005 SE and how you can use these new tools to create addins for your office applications.

Ben Walters InfoPath MVP : Office 2007 RTM

Office RTM Product Key Issue Update

Office TR -> RTM Install