Office 365 renewal

soolin

2 questions really.

I'm not techie so I stick with things I know 'straight out of the box' and need excel and Word for work papers they send across.

A couple of years ago I got a heavily discounted offer via a coupon on Amazon for Office 365 and that expires in 2 weeks, renewal for one PC is £59.99 for a year. Before I go and pay over that money is there any legit way of getting it cheaper or buying a new version that will work. before I had this version I installed a basic version using a key I bought via a Hot Deals link, but that stopped working very quickly and despite uninstalling cleaning the PC and reinstalling this new version has left me with real issue even on this new version which frankly I have just lived with.

Usually when I try and open a Word document it tries something called XML handler and tells me it can't be installed as I don't have permission for the fonts. The computer then just continues to try and I can only cancel that install by repeatedly going via task manager to delete it. If I wait about 4 minutes mostly my Word documents will open, although on occasions that won't open at all as they say I have no associated programme. I find it easier to open using Adobe reader touch if I have that option, but not all documents let me do that.

Any assistance to purchasing a new Word programme and starting afresh would be useful thank you.

flashg67

There's no free way of getting Office and there are many selling keys that only work for a while as you've found. This might help - it's a year old but still current. https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/free-office-software

cranford

Have you tried one of the free open source office 365 compatible programs?
I use Libreoffice and it works for me but you would need to try it on your works documents.

soolin

cranford wrote: »

Have you tried one of the free open source office 365 compatible programs?
I use Libreoffice and it works for me but you would need to try it on your works documents.

I have tried that before without success, that's when I gave up and bought the real thing.

dipsomaniac

I bought office 2016 from eBay for less than a fiver last year. Easy to install/activate with no problems.

RumRat

Yes, Plenty on ebay, or, you can use the free online versions via any Microsoft account.
If you don't want to do either, then give Libre Office another try.
You can also try WPS which is also free and closer to MS Office in style.

libra10

I bought Office 2016 from Ebay earlier this year, at a cost of £6.50. This was to upgrade Office 2007, which was no longer supported by Microsoft.


Everything worked well, and the only problem was that Excel and Word were showing with compatibility issues. This was easily resolved by googling the answer.


No other issues so far.

Carrot007

Depends on wheather you want to chance a dodgy key for around a fiver (for office not 365) that may be picked up sometime depending on where ity came from (and often how many times it is sold (yes they sell each one multiple times)). (These are dodgy corperate (etc) keys).



Or want to go for a semi dodgy 365 key. One that came with a new PC and is not for resale but will probably continue to work.


Or a office 365 10-20% reduced legit key from a reputable reseller.


No reason why you can't use a discounted key to extend your licence, MS just home you will pay the full standard fee!


All options can be found on amazon (and other places I'm sure). Read the reviews to know what you might be getting into. It's hard to tell on amazon as multiple suppliers are on the same feedback.

dipsomaniac

the only other software i have ever paid for (53 yrs old) was win7 = £105 ish. still hurts & wont do it again soon

molerat

Which Windows version are you using ? Office starter 2010 does the majority of tasks, install office add remover and it is even better. Does not work with W10 though.

Lorian

Soolin,

If you work for a large company you might be able to get office 365 for free using the new Home Use Program. Otherwise paying the £59 is not very MSE but what I would do.

If you post the full detail of the error you get on startup it will be fixable.