Lost MS Office 2003 CDs, am I screwed?

A while ago, I bought MS Office 2003 Student/Teacher edition (which allows installation on 3 machines). I have it on my son's desktop and a laptop. Just bought a new desktop, and was going to install Office -- and for the life of me can't find the original Office CDs! (have turned the house upside down to no avail) Which means I have two problems -- (a) don't have the discs to install the s/w, (b) don't have my product key.

I do have the other two installations, e.g. is it possible to retrieve my product key from the laptop? But even then I still don't have the s/w to install on the new desktop, and I only see Office 2007 available for download on Microsoft's site.

Am I screwed? Any help or suggestions appreciated!

 

If you search on Google, you'll find a program that can get the Office key from your other two installations no problem.

Not sure about the CDs though, you might be able to contact MS and ask for a replacement disc(s).

 

Absolutly, Open office is better, compact and absoluty free compared to MS office 200x. I use open office and i find almost all known formarts are compatable with the openoffice applications.

Try it and you would never regret it! :d

 

Thanks to the Jellybean program, I was able to retrieve my Student/Teacher product key. And I uncovered my original of MS Office 2003 Professional that I have installed on my own laptop.

Would I be able to use the Professional CDs, select and install only the 4 apps included in the Standard edition, and use my Student/Teacher product key to activate it? Or would that not work because the Pro CD installation is different?

I appreciate the OpenOffice suggestions but I'd really like to just get my already paid for instance of MS Office on the new desktop!

Thanks all!

 

Update:

I found this support page at Microsoft:
Click!

Called the support line, the nice rep went through some verification, and I ordered replacement disks for $23 + 5 shipping + tax. 3-10 days ETA.

Oh well, lesson learned, I guess... of course in digging everywhere, I found old sets of MS Office 2000, XP, etc... but not the one I was seeking...

ETA: Rep also said I couldn't use the Pro disks.

 

hahahahah, that's hilarious.

i've used openoffice in linux for a long time and openoffice clearly sucks compared to MS Office.

please go ahead and list for us the specific ways in which openoffice is "better" than ms office? how about somewhere between 3 to 5 specific bullet points?

 

The advantages of OpenOffice that I see, he did mention:
+ more compact
+ free

Otherwise, like you I do prefer MS Office. I did install OpenOffice on my youngest's hand-me-down PC, just so it would have some productivity software on the machine (and I didn't want to burn one of the Student licenses for it) ... but for actual work always turn to MS Office.

Wish it were like Firefox vs. Internet Explorer! That's pretty much a no-brainer ... I only use IE now for accessing Outlook webmail and maybe one or two other sites that work better with it. But alas...

 

You could have done this. Extract the product key from one laptop and then use the set up files (copied during installation of office) to reinstall office.