Re: change from Home and Student to Small Business

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"travelingswimmer" <travelingswimmer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:9D22EE29-FE42-4183-BFE7-C588DF4447F2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi again -
Thanks so much for your response; it provided a lot of info, but your
suggesting that I might have a trial version of Microsoft Office Home and
Student begs a follow-up question. I received the computer as a Christmas
gift, so I do not if the Microsoft Office H&S was paid for separately. I only
know the computer was purchased directly from HP. So how would I be able to
tell if I had a trial version? Microsoft Office H&S appears to be fully
loaded & operational on my week old computer, provides no messages as to a
time limit for use when I have used Word, and I do have an official Microsoft
packaged but unopened Microsoft Office H&S CD with product key on the back.
This fact alone leads me to believe that the the version of Microsoft Office
is not a trial version, but I'm not sure and so I'm checking.
Also, your comment about being able to purchase the retail upgrade for
Microsoft Office SBE if I have a qualifying product added more impetus to
what is probably my underlying question. Is purchasing an upgrade possible in
this situation? I assumed that a Microsoft upgrade applied only within that
Microsoft Office edition. For instance, if you had H&S then you upgraded with
H&S and if you had SBE then you upgraded with SBE. Obviously it makes sense
that you could only upgrade with a higher suite of Office, not lower, so that
all components of the suite fully upgraded. But I argued with myself that
since the higher level Office suite has new components, an upgrade might not
load the new components (like Publisher and Outlook) if they weren't loaded
originally. I just couldn't find a clarification anywhere or make complete
sense of how an upgrade would work. So if I purchase a Microsoft Office Small
Business Edition 2007 UPGRADE and apply it onto my currently loaded Microsoft
Office Home & Student 2007 will all the Office applications including
Publisher and Outlook work fully and properly ????
Thanks for the tip on Amazon. I had found the Microsoft Office Small
Business editon at Costco for $234.99 which was the best price I could find.
Going with an upgrade would save me a lot of money.
Thank you so much for your quick response and valuable information. My new
computer is so amazing that I just want to keep it working well. Have a great
day.

If you have the CD for H & S I too would assume that it is a full, probably OEM, version of the Office suite. To see exactly what you have you need to start one of the programs (these are for Word.) Click the Office button then Word Options, Resources, About Microsoft Word. To determine if the product is OEM you can see if the letters OEM are in the second set of numbers in the Product ID (of course you can look at the license key information on the sticker on the back of the CD. If it has FPP on it you have a retail (install onto three computers), OEM or MLK the license is tied forever to the laptop you have.

As for upgrading. I had H & S on the system I am typing this on. Upgraded to SBE and all works properly except the Non-commercial use information is on the header. The only way to prevent that from happening AFAIK is to uninstall all the parts of H & S you don't want to display the Non-commercial information and install SBE. I really don't worry about it since I do have a licensed copy of SBE installed. When I installed SBE I told it to overwrite Word but it didn’t' change the registry settings for the Non-commercial use. When you run the install for SBE, Publisher and Outlook will install fine so that will relieve some of your anxiety.

As for upgrading .... See: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/FX101754511033.aspx and look at the right hand column for the upgrade qualifier for SBE. You will see that any Office 2007 product will be an upgrade qualifier.

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