Product ID

Jeff Layman wrote:

My guess is that the laptop came with a free trial of MS Office. On my
laptop I am limited to something like 20 uses for free, but then I would
have to purchase a licence to continue using it. I would think that she
has - perhaps without knowing it - used up her free trial.

I think you've got it. It happens only when she tries to open a ppt
file, so it's an application, not the OS. Does she have the same
problem if she tries to open a doc or xls (or docx or xlsx) file?

If she needs to view the ppt file she can download a free viewer from
Microsoft, or maybe OpenOffice might be a solution.

Open Office if she needs to update the docs, otherwise the viewer
would be fine.

--
Tim Slattery

http://members.cox.net/slatteryt

"Buffalo" wrote:


I'll bet that is probably the problem. Doesn't Win7 Home Premium have a
default program for opening pps files?

Nope. No Windows OS ever has, although *many* preinstalled systems
come with a trial version of Office.

--
Tim Slattery

http://members.cox.net/slatteryt

"Buffalo" wrote in message
...
A friend who has Win7 Home Premium 64bit on a laptop gets a message to enter
her product ID while trying to view some .pps that I sent her. She is out of
the country and isn't very computer knowledgeable. She has had the new
laptop for only a few months.
I am trying to get her to tell me who 'they' are. The 'they' being "they
want me to enter my product key do indo it or what".
Anyone have a clue? I told her not to enter anything yet.
Another quote from her: "they want me now to get product key they said do
this and you will find it must have from now to get big picture thing like
that."
I told her it may be a trial program that is opening that .pps up, but other
than that, I don't know. She bought the laptop at Office Depot.
Does MS ask for a product ID after you purchase it from a store like OD?
Thanks,
Buffalo
Win2000ProSP4



Buffalo

2 scenarios and a very well known issue as your friend is experiencing

(1) She has a Trial version installed
(2) She has the Trial version installed and when she installed the purchased version
she did not remove the Trial version and the Activation Assistant beforehand
installing the purchased version.

Tell her to uninstall all of Office that is shown including the Activation Assistant
and all Trial and all non Trial versions and reboot after. Then start the purchased
Office install over again

--
Peter
Please Reply to Newsgroup for the benefit of others
Requests for assistance by email can not and will not be acknowledged.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

Peter Foldes wrote:
"Buffalo" wrote in message
...
A friend who has Win7 Home Premium 64bit on a laptop gets a message
to enter her product ID while trying to view some .pps that I sent
her. She is out of the country and isn't very computer
knowledgeable. She has had the new laptop for only a few months.
I am trying to get her to tell me who 'they' are. The 'they' being
"they want me to enter my product key do indo it or what".
Anyone have a clue? I told her not to enter anything yet.
Another quote from her: "they want me now to get product key they
said do this and you will find it must have from now to get big
picture thing like that."
I told her it may be a trial program that is opening that .pps up,
but other than that, I don't know. She bought the laptop at Office
Depot.
Does MS ask for a product ID after you purchase it from a store like
OD? Thanks,
Buffalo
Win2000ProSP4



Buffalo

2 scenarios and a very well known issue as your friend is experiencing

(1) She has a Trial version installed
(2) She has the Trial version installed and when she installed the
purchased version she did not remove the Trial version and the
Activation Assistant beforehand installing the purchased version.

Tell her to uninstall all of Office that is shown including the
Activation Assistant and all Trial and all non Trial versions and
reboot after. Then start the purchased Office install over again

Thanks for that info, Peter.
She did not purchase MS Office and I would bet that the trial version of it
is what the problem is.
Do you know if the trial version uninstalled completely through Add-Remove?
Thanks again,
Buffalo
PS:If leaving that trial version on and installing Open Office will not
cause a problem, I think that would be the way to go for her since she has a
lot of free HDD space and is very computer illiterate.

On 09/11/2010 16:51, Buffalo wrote:
Jeff Layman wrote:
On 09/11/2010 15:10, Buffalo wrote:
Buffalo wrote:
A friend who has Win7 Home Premium 64bit on a laptop gets a message
to enter her product ID while trying to view some .pps that I sent
her. She is out of the country and isn't very computer
knowledgeable. She has had the new laptop for only a few months.
I am trying to get her to tell me who 'they' are. The 'they' being
"they want me to enter my produt key do indo it or what".
Anyone have a clue? I told her not to enter anything yet.
Another quote from her: "they want me now to get product key they
said do this and you will find it must have from now to get big
picture thing like that."
I told her it may be a trial program that is opening that .pps up,
but other than that, I don't know. She bought the laptop at Office
Depot.
Does MS ask for a product ID after you purchase it from a store like
OD? Thanks,
Buffalo
Win2000ProSP4

Sorry, 'they' are asking for a Product Key, not a Product ID.
Buffalo


My guess is that the laptop came with a free trial of MS Office. On
my laptop I am limited to something like 20 uses for free, but then I
would have to purchase a licence to continue using it. I would think
that she has - perhaps without knowing it - used up her free trial.

If she needs to view the ppt file she can download a free viewer from
Microsoft, or maybe OpenOffice might be a solution.

I'll bet that is probably the problem. Doesn't Win7 Home Premium have a
default program for opening pps files?
If not, I will ask her to dl and install the free Open Office program.(that
may be tough because she is very computer illiterate).
I'll have to ask her to find a friend or (damn) go to a shop and have
someone do it for her.
If it is MS Office causing the problem, is it worthwhile to uninstall it
from her laptop (she has plenty of unused HDD space)?
Thanks,
Buffalo


I think that the PowerPoint viewer would be a better choice. OpenOffice
is a big download (150Mb?), and although it can be used "out of the box"
is better configured by the user. Also, it uses different terminology
for some things than MS Office does. I use it, but I don't think it is
the ideal choice for a novice.

The only plus point is that it is a complete suite (like MS Office) so
if she intends to view Word and Excel files, it may be better tobite the
bullet and just do the one download, rather than download the free Word
and Excel viewers. The only other downside is that OO is not fully
up-to-speed with the latest MS Office file formats (eg docx). It will
display them, but the formatting may not be quite right.

Unless she needs the space I wouldn't bother uninstalling the free trial
(especially if she isn't sure what she is doing! A lot of damage can
be done when at Control Panel "uninstall"!!).

--

Jeff

"Buffalo" wrote in message ...



Buffalo wrote:
A friend who has Win7 Home Premium 64bit on a laptop gets a message
to enter her product ID while trying to view some .pps that I sent
her. She is out of the country and isn't very computer knowledgeable.
She has had the new laptop for only a few months.
I am trying to get her to tell me who 'they' are. The 'they' being
"they want me to enter my produt key do indo it or what".
Anyone have a clue? I told her not to enter anything yet.
Another quote from her: "they want me now to get product key they
said do this and you will find it must have from now to get big
picture thing like that."
I told her it may be a trial program that is opening that .pps up,
but other than that, I don't know. She bought the laptop at Office
Depot.
Does MS ask for a product ID after you purchase it from a store like
OD? Thanks,
Buffalo
Win2000ProSP4

Sorry, 'they' are asking for a Product Key, not a Product ID.
Buffalo

The bad news is that your friend's query looks a bit like the one dealt with
by this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/836178

The problem of course is that is not certain.

Probably the easiest temporary thing to do is to download the installation
file for the free Powerpoint viewer from Microsoft, try it out yourself and
then email it to your friend with good instructions about what to do with it
(including how to put an email attachment on the desktop).

I know zilch about Powerpoint but surely it is possible to send whatever it
is you want a person to see using a format which they are going to have no
trouble with?

Putting my anti-capitalist hyena hat on for a sec, I must give a slight
mention to the fact that OpenOffice will deal with Powerpoint files and does
not, of course, bother with all that product key nonsense.

Jeff Layman wrote:
On 09/11/2010 16:51, Buffalo wrote:
[snip]

I'll bet that is probably the problem. Doesn't Win7 Home Premium
have a default program for opening pps files?
If not, I will ask her to dl and install the free Open Office
program.(that may be tough because she is very computer illiterate).
I'll have to ask her to find a friend or (damn) go to a shop and have
someone do it for her.
If it is MS Office causing the problem, is it worthwhile to
uninstall it from her laptop (she has plenty of unused HDD space)?
Thanks,
Buffalo


I think that the PowerPoint viewer would be a better choice.
OpenOffice is a big download (150Mb?), and although it can be used
"out of the box" is better configured by the user. Also, it uses
different terminology for some things than MS Office does. I use it,
but I don't think it is the ideal choice for a novice.

The only plus point is that it is a complete suite (like MS Office) so
if she intends to view Word and Excel files, it may be better tobite
the bullet and just do the one download, rather than download the
free Word and Excel viewers. The only other downside is that OO is
not fully up-to-speed with the latest MS Office file formats (eg
docx). It will display them, but the formatting may not be quite
right.

Unless she needs the space I wouldn't bother uninstalling the free
trial (especially if she isn't sure what she is doing! A lot of
damage can be done when at Control Panel "uninstall"!!).

I will take your advice about not uninstalling the trial version of MS
Office.
I have read that MS Updates to Win7 seems to delete a needed PPViewer file
in Win7 . I will research that more.
Thanks again,
Buffalo

Peter Foldes wrote:
"Buffalo" wrote in message
...

Thanks for that info, Peter.
She did not purchase MS Office and I would bet that the trial version of it
is what the problem is.
Do you know if the trial version uninstalled completely through Add-Remove?
Thanks again,
Buffalo
PS:If leaving that trial version on and installing Open Office will not
cause a problem, I think that would be the way to go for her since she has a
lot of free HDD space and is very computer illiterate.


Buffalo

Your friend can always do the following as per below to make sure Office is
uninstalled.
Also Very Important is that the Activation Assistant (Part of the Trial version )has
to be uninstalled also. Many make the mistake and leave it in there and then the
same issue applies as your friend experienced.
You can install Open Office without uninstalling the Trial version of MS Office

Applies to all versions of Office 2007 and up
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928218
--
Peter
Please Reply to Newsgroup for the benefit of others
Requests for assistance by email can not and will not be acknowledged.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

On 09/11/2010 19:16, Buffalo wrote:
Jeff Layman wrote:
On 09/11/2010 16:51, Buffalo wrote:
[snip]

I'll bet that is probably the problem. Doesn't Win7 Home Premium
have a default program for opening pps files?
If not, I will ask her to dl and install the free Open Office
program.(that may be tough because she is very computer illiterate).
I'll have to ask her to find a friend or (damn) go to a shop and have
someone do it for her.
If it is MS Office causing the problem, is it worthwhile to
uninstall it from her laptop (she has plenty of unused HDD space)?
Thanks,
Buffalo


I think that the PowerPoint viewer would be a better choice.
OpenOffice is a big download (150Mb?), and although it can be used
"out of the box" is better configured by the user. Also, it uses
different terminology for some things than MS Office does. I use it,
but I don't think it is the ideal choice for a novice.

The only plus point is that it is a complete suite (like MS Office) so
if she intends to view Word and Excel files, it may be better tobite
the bullet and just do the one download, rather than download the
free Word and Excel viewers. The only other downside is that OO is
not fully up-to-speed with the latest MS Office file formats (eg
docx). It will display them, but the formatting may not be quite
right.

Unless she needs the space I wouldn't bother uninstalling the free
trial (especially if she isn't sure what she is doing! A lot of
damage can be done when at Control Panel "uninstall"!!).

I will take your advice about not uninstalling the trial version of MS
Office.
I have read that MS Updates to Win7 seems to delete a needed PPViewer file
in Win7 . I will research that more.

I hadn't heard that, but who knows where MS is concerned? ;-)

Thanks again,
Buffalo

You're welcome. Good luck!

--

Jeff

Peter Foldes wrote:
Peter Foldes wrote:
"Buffalo" wrote in message
...

Thanks for that info, Peter.
She did not purchase MS Office and I would bet that the trial
version of it is what the problem is.
Do you know if the trial version uninstalled completely through
Add-Remove? Thanks again,
Buffalo
PS:If leaving that trial version on and installing Open Office will
not cause a problem, I think that would be the way to go for her
since she has a lot of free HDD space and is very computer
illiterate.


Buffalo

Your friend can always do the following as per below to make sure
Office is uninstalled.
Also Very Important is that the Activation Assistant (Part of the
Trial version )has to be uninstalled also. Many make the mistake and
leave it in there and then the same issue applies as your friend
experienced.
You can install Open Office without uninstalling the Trial version of
MS Office

Applies to all versions of Office 2007 and up
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928218
Thanks you,
Buffalo

You are welcome Buffalo

--
Peter
Please Reply to Newsgroup for the benefit of others
Requests for assistance by email can not and will not be acknowledged.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
http://www.microsoft.com/protect


"Buffalo" wrote in message
...


Peter Foldes wrote:
Peter Foldes wrote:
"Buffalo" wrote in message
...

Thanks for that info, Peter.
She did not purchase MS Office and I would bet that the trial
version of it is what the problem is.
Do you know if the trial version uninstalled completely through
Add-Remove? Thanks again,
Buffalo
PS:If leaving that trial version on and installing Open Office will
not cause a problem, I think that would be the way to go for her
since she has a lot of free HDD space and is very computer
illiterate.


Buffalo

Your friend can always do the following as per below to make sure
Office is uninstalled.
Also Very Important is that the Activation Assistant (Part of the
Trial version )has to be uninstalled also. Many make the mistake and
leave it in there and then the same issue applies as your friend
experienced.
You can install Open Office without uninstalling the Trial version of
MS Office

Applies to all versions of Office 2007 and up
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928218
Thanks you,
Buffalo