Which Microsoft office?

ziggles50

Hi all please bear with me for all the quetions i'm abut to ask.
I have a home pc that went in for repairs and had microsoft office on it- no idea what version but bought the computer in 2003/4 if that helps. Now they've wiped it and i have no idea where the cd or product key is. the shop was very unhlpful and said i had little or no hope of getting Dell to give me the details from so long ago.
I think the pc is running on windows xp so my question is which version of office do i need. it is a very old computer (dell dimension 2400). To make things a little more complicated we have a snazzy newer laptop that runs on vista and also would need office put on it.
We really only need it for letters and the occasional personal spreadsheet and to open sent documents - we're not pros and don't use it regularly at all. It's just inconvenient not having it.
Can anyone tell me what the best thing to do would be as in version of office and where to get it?

thanks:)

fwor

The best money saving thing to do would be to install LibreOffice on both.

It's free, Open Source and it will allow you to work on pretty much any MS Office document/spreadsheet/presentation.

If you set it up initially so that it saves files by default in one of the common MS Office formats (rather than its own format), you can try it out and go back and pay for Office instead if you don't like it.

InsideInsurance

The office alternatives mentioned are both reasonable and are fine for users who arent going to be switch between office and it frequently. They are good but they aren't perfectly compatible and so complex documents can lose formatting etc.

Where do you work? Many larger companies operate the HUC programme with Microsoft that allows you to get the latest version for around about £15

ziggles50

Hi thanks all
My company doesn't have any sort of deal thing going on- fully researched with IT dept.
I use openoffice and it seems to work fine but the two older peeps in the house hate it and have difficulty with saving stuff and working on other work documents etc. And being old school they insist on working with what they know!
i will call dell tomorrow and do some begging.

scheming_gypsy

If you bought a PC from Dell in 2003 / 2004 it probably came with a trial version of Office 2003. When that expired you'd have bought the full license from Microsoft, as i can't remember any branded PC coming with a full version of Office; Works maybe but not Office.

ziggles50

scheming_gypsy wrote: »

If you bought a PC from Dell in 2003 / 2004 it probably came with a trial version of Office 2003. When that expired you'd have bought the full license from Microsoft, as i can't remember any branded PC coming with a full version of Office; Works maybe but not Office.

We paid the big bucks for the all singing stuff with installation guy and everything. The parentals defo didn't do things by half then. if they sold it we bought it! I think i can locate an itemised list of the stuff it came with.

closed

Search for the cd, do disk image backups in future, and come here instead of going to shops.

if the factory recovery partition is still there, you may be able to put it back to like new condition - the shop has probably deleted it though