Microsoft Office 2003 Forum

Here's a question: Office 2003 requires activation, and each license can only be activated on 3 computers (depending on which license you have). This has something to do with the physical hardware (you can reformat Windows and reinstall Office without using up another of your activations).

How does your work here handle this constraint? Does office activate itself in the same way as in windows (aka by hardware somehow) or does it see the crossover office install as happening on a distinct computer?

I'm asking this b/c I recently took the plunge, left windows, and am hoping to run Office'03 on the same laptop. Will I lose my last activation by trying out crossover office? If I upgrade to a new version of crossover office later, will I need still another new activation?

Wow, I wish I'd researched this better before dropping so much money on a word processor...

Anyway, thanks.
-Steve

I don't know this for sure, but I think MS Office 2003 running in CXOffice will see the hardware differently than MS Office 2003 running in MS Windows. Although I think there are possibilities (depending on how MS Office 2003 checks your hardware and how CXOffice reports it compared to MS Windows) that would allow the same key to be used on both MS Windows and CXOffice.

If CXOffice reports thing differently, there still also might be unique per CXOffice installation things though. If CXOffice reports your real ethernet MAC address for example, different systems with CXOffice will require a new activation key for sure.

If you get into problems because you cannot activate, it should be possible to call up MS manually and they should be able to help you out. Otherwise, there are probably also several patches availlable to work around the problem. It should also be possible to obtain a copy of a corporate edition, which doesn't need activation. The last two options might not be legal in your country though.
I also believe I heard that MS had a better arrangement, so you could get your money back if you didn't like the product, since they've started using the activation.

firstly i didn't think office 2003 worked yet
seconly i know windows does its activation with a mixture of information from your graphics card, cpu and mother board
so office should be something of the same
i know office xp activates on both my linux and windows partitions with out a worry

hope thats helpfull
andrew

wow both our replys to the question were at the exact same time
thats freaky
andrew

Hehe,
That indead looks freaky.

You mean that you can use the same key to activate MS Office in MS Windows to active it in CXOffice? That would mean CXOffice indeed reports hardware the same to MS Office as MS Windows does and there wouldn't be any new activations needed.

Thats how my theory goes at least this is what happens in office xp don't recon 2003 to much different

andrew

I indeed OWN a corporate edition, and it has the same problems as regular vanilla office 2k3. This leads me to believe that though activation is a stumbling block, we havent even reached that point where we need give it that attention.

-straylight

Steve,
Office 2003 will not be supported until release 5. However you can reinstall the Office, or any Winblows, product on the same PC as many times as needed. When you activate you must select the phone option and talk to a person. You will give the operator the 40 digit number on your screen and explain to them that you are re-installing the product on the same PC. They will then give you a 40 digit code to enter in your activation window.