Purchase Of Office Professional 2010

[hlewton]

I am wondering if anyone has any experience in purchasing Office Pro 2010 from a site that sells it for about $400.00 USD less than other sites. The description says is is from China and even ships from there. This is it's description: Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Brand New Retail Sealed for 2 pcs. Though it is about the $400.00 USD less that I mentioned it is still about $200.00 which I don't really want to gamble on losing if the product isn't authentic. So I was just soliciting thoughts on this. It is from a reputable site that I believe everyone around the world can buy from but I just can't decide from reading all about it if it would be a good purchase. Any comments would be appreciated.


Thanks

[HansV]

Personally, I wouldn't trust it. If it's from China, it may be a hacked/pirated copy.

[hlewton]

Thanks Hans that was exactly my concern too.

Just curious about the version that you download and then activate with a purchased key that states it is for 1 license, 1 person, and 1 computer only. If the computer that it is installed on should crash are you out that purchase or can you get a hold of MS to have it activated on a new machine? Those keys are not cheap either and would hate to have to purchase the software again because of a crash or having to reinstall Windows which we all know happens too frequently. I'm not at all sure what would happen if one of my computers that has the Office 2010 on them now crashed even though I do have the software and paid for 2 licenses with it.

[HansV]

If your computer crashes and if you still have the key, you can contact Microsoft and ask them to 'deactivate' the key for the old computer and 'activate' it for a new one. They are generally very reasonable about that, but it may take a while to get hold of the right person.

[hlewton]

Thanks I usually save everything like that. Isn't it Belarc that can retrieve that information if it would be lost? I know I'd have to run it before any fatal crash but that can easily be done.

[JoeP]

If this is for personal use and you have multiple PCs consider Office 365 Home. Office 365 Home allows you to install Office 365 Pro Plus on five PCs/Macs and five tablets. If it is for personal use and you have only one PC and one tablet consider Office 365 Personal. For the full price of Office 2010 Pro which allows you to install on two devices you get 6 years of Office 365 Home. You may be able to find Office 2010 Pro for considerably less than full price but you need to be very careful of the source.

Joe

[DaveA]

The problem with Office 365, there is an annual fee that must be paid when ever due.

Office 365 Home Premium, which costs $100 per year -- or $10 per month -- includes the right to install a top-end edition of Office 2013 or the business-esque edition of Office for Mac 2011, on up to five Windows PC or Macs in a household.

[HansV]

The full price for Office 2010 Professional, which you can install on one PC and one laptop, is about US$ 600.As JoeP wrote, that is equivalent to 6 years subscription to Office 365. You can install it on up to 5 devices, and it will still be up-to-date in six years time, in 2020. Office 2010 would be 10 years old by that time.

[hlewton]

If this is for personal use and you have multiple PCs consider Office 365 Home. Office 365 Home allows you to install Office 365 Pro Plus on five PCs/Macs and five tablets. If it is for personal use and you have only one PC and one tablet consider Office 365 Personal. For the full price of Office 2010 Pro which allows you to install on two devices you get 6 years of Office 365 Home. You may be able to find Office 2010 Pro for considerably less than full price but you need to be very careful of the source.

Joe

I never thought of this and kind of like the idea. I do already have Office 2010 Pro installed on two machines but I assume if I purchased this I would be able to update them to Office 2013 but I didn't see any info on that at the site linked other than this quote, "Office 365 customers with an active subscription always get the newest versions of the Office applications when they are available. When we release a new version of Office, you will be notified that you have the option to update your software to the latest version."

In addition I couldn't find answers to this question and if you know the answers I would appreciate knowing:
When I install Office on my computers from CDs or DVDs I do a complete install, installing everything to be run from my computer. Can I still do this with this type of install?

I also like the fact that it can be loaded on an iPad but don't like this part of that, "iPads® running iOS 7.0 or higher" because I have refused to update from iOS 6 since many I know, including a family member, have had trouble with their iPads ever since updating. I do also know many who had no problems at all but just figured I'd be one of those to have the problems and I know very little about how to use my iPad as it is let alone if it had problems.

I'm also curious if there are guides available on line to help with application commands that I'm used to in version 2003 like the guides for version 2010.

[JoeP]

With an Office 365 subscription you do not use install media. You stream the install using a technology Microsoft calls "click-to-run" which ends up with everything installed on your PC. This is also what is used to keep Office updated usually monthly. The "click-to-run" technology allows you to begin using various components before the complete suite is installed. When the updates are delivered you get public fixes that are available from Windows Update, private fixes which are not yet available from Windows Update, and possibly new features. You can always check the content by going to Microsoft Office 2013 Click-to-Run virtualization.

Joe

[hlewton]

Thank you Joe for the information. I am seriously thinking about it but am going to wait until I get my computer back from being rebuilt and updated to Win 7 then I believe I'll try it on that computer before trying to update the two that already have Office 2010 on them.

[JoeP]

You are able to run Office 365 Pro Plus (which currently is the Office 2013 Pro Plus desktop applications) and Office 2010 Pro side-by-side. You can use Office 2013 to get used to it and then uninstall Office 2010 at your leisure.

Joe

[hlewton]

Thanks Joe that is good to know.

[hlewton]

You are able to run Office 365 Pro Plus (which currently is the Office 2013 Pro Plus desktop applications) and Office 2010 Pro side-by-side. You can use Office 2013 to get used to it and then uninstall Office 2010 at your leisure.

Joe

I just read all I found at Office 365's site as far as FAQs, etc. are concerned and learned that if I ever chose to let a subscription expire the Office programs revert to a read and print version only. So I am thinking if there are no downfalls to keeping both versions installed I could always revert to using my Office 2010 if I had to. Are there any reasons this isn't something to consider? Also if both versions remain installed does one version have to be picked as the default version to use when opening existing documents or creating new ones?

[Jay Freedman]

So I am thinking if there are no downfalls to keeping both versions installed I could always revert to using my Office 2010 if I had to. Are there any reasons this isn't something to consider? Also if both versions remain installed does one version have to be picked as the default version to use when opening existing documents or creating new ones?

I'd say that keeping side-by-side installations of Office versions works very well. There are just a couple of things to take care of, to make sure there are no problems.

One is that you can only keep one version of Outlook on the machine. If you use Outlook, decide in advance which version you want, because you'll have to tell the Office 365 installer which one to keep.

When you have two or more versions of Word, there's a registry entry you can add to prevent Office from "reconfiguring" each time you switch from one to the other. Herb Tyson's blog post describes the "NoRereg" entry. The version number you would use for Word 2013 is "15.0".

Windows is pretty bad about letting you decide which version of the program to open when you double-click a document file in Explorer -- there's only one registry entry for each extension. You could, for example, have .doc files open only in Word 2010 and .docm file open only in Word 2013, but you can't choose on the fly (at least, I've found that the right-click-"Open With" ignores your specific choice). It's simpler to open the program version of your preference and then use Ctrl+O to select the document to open.

Each version of Office installs in its own folder under the Program Files folder, but you should also set up a separate Templates folder for each version so they don't all try to use the same Normal.dotm template.

In an earlier post you asked about a guide to commands. If you're used to Word 2010 already, you should find very little difference in 2013. The available documentation is linked here.

[Rudi]

Some excellent points Jay; well worth noting if one decides to go this route with two insallations.
One question.
Do you know if Excel and PowerPoint also have that NoReReg registry entry, since they also prompt at the application startup if you switch to the other version. Or is the NoreReg a global Office setting if adjusted.

TX

[JoeP]

If you are using the click-to-run version of Office 365 Pro Plus you can run multiple versions of Outlook. See Potential problems if you have Outlook 2013 and an earlier version of Outlook installed on the same computer for more information. You can NOT run both versions of Outlook at the same time. See Outlook 2010 gone in Side-by-Side Installation with 2013 for more information. Also, see Office 2013 known issues.

Note: you can't have 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Office installed at the same time.

Joe

[hlewton]

Each version of Office installs in its own folder under the Program Files folder, but you should also set up a separate Templates folder for each version so they don't all try to use the same Normal.dotm template.

Thank you Jay for this information and I hope you don’t mind a couple more questions.

I’m not afraid to make Registry changes but I don’t understand some of the terms. The 15.0 you mentioned would that be in place of the 12.0 in this example - HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Options ?

I had no idea how to add that “NoRereg DWORD (32-bit)” because I really have little knowledge about Registry edits. I did search the NET to see how it could be accomplished. I finally found one that gave steps on how to do it so I feel better about that now and I think it answered my question about the 15.0 I asked above.

As far as Outlook is concerned will I be given the option of which one to use on each machine I install Office 365 on or does the download site remember your first choice?

What I quoted above has me confused because I’m not sure how this would be done. Doesn’t Word create its own Normal.dotm. template? I have found tutorials on how to create a Normal.dotm but so far I have not found how to have more than one or possibly I am not understanding what I am reading about them. Do you know of a link where I can get clear instructions on how to do as you mentioned?

I too was curious about what Rudi asked and would also like to add Access to his question.

Thanks again for a the information.

[hlewton]

If you are using the click-to-run version of Office 365 Pro Plus you can run multiple versions of Outlook. See Potential problems if you have Outlook 2013 and an earlier version of Outlook installed on the same computer for more information. You can NOT run both versions of Outlook at the same time. See Outlook 2010 gone in Side-by-Side Installation with 2013 for more information. Also, see Office 2013 known issues.

Note: you can't have 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Office installed at the same time.

Joe

Thanks Joe for this information but I don't know what click-to-run version of Office 365 pro means. From what I have gathered in the last couple days it seems to me that on the machines I already have Outlook 2010 running on I am better off keeping that version of Outlook. On the machine I don't have back from the shop yet, which essentially will be a new machine, I will only have Outlook 2013 on it if I can have that choice depending on the answer to my question in my above post. I am hoping that the download site gives me the choice of which version of Outlook to use on each individual installation.

[Jay Freedman]

Do you know if Excel and PowerPoint also have that NoReReg registry entry, since they also prompt at the application startup if you switch to the other version. Or is the NoreReg a global Office setting if adjusted.

As far as I'm aware, the NoRereg entry is only for Word.

On my desktop PC, I have Office 2007, 2010, and 2013 (plus only Word from Office 2003). In the registry, each of the Word keys has a NoRereg entry, but there are none in the Excel or PowerPoint keys. I can switch from one version to another of any of the three programs without any reconfiguration delay.

I'd be surprised if an entry in the Word key affected the behavior of Excel or PowerPoint -- if that was intended, then the entry would probably be in the Office\<version> key instead. It was/is my assumption that the other two programs don't have the same reconfiguration problem that Word does.

One other item, picking up from JoeP's post: I think that Word in Office 365 (the click-to-run version) doesn't need the NoRereg entry. The C2R mechanism does some "virtualization" that isolates 365 from other versions. What I know is that adding the entry doesn't do any harm, because that's how my laptop runs Office 2010 and 365 side by side.