New Microsoft Word

Independent of what has happened, you should be able to uninstall all Office software from your computer (preferably, indeed, using Revo uninstaller) and after that reinstall Office 2007 from the installation medium you had got when you bought it. During installation you will have to fill in the registration code that belongs to it.

I have done reinstallations of both Office 2003 and 2007 many times, because I was going to use a new PC or I had to reinstall Windows on a computer. Never has been any problem for me. These days I use different Office software (not from Microsoft), so I don't need the long way of reinstalling all updates as well for older Office packages.

Kees said:

Independent of what has happened, you should be able to uninstall all Office software from your computer (preferably, indeed, using Revo uninstaller) and after that reinstall Office 2007 from the installation medium you had got when you bought it. During installation you will have to fill in the registration code that belongs to it.

I have done reinstallations of both Office 2003 and 2007 many times, because I was going to use a new PC or I had to reinstall Windows on a computer. Never has been any problem for me. These days I use different Office software (not from Microsoft), so I don't need the long way of reinstalling all updates as well for older Office packages.

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Thank you. I think that this is my best option, when I can find time. Yes the DVD does have a registration code on the packaging.

I have now searched in my apps folder and the new Office suite no longer appears. However, whenever I try to open a word document, there is lengthy wait for 'configuring word' to take place, as it always has done since the problem arose a few days ago, but at least it does then open correctly.

Unfortunately, my laptop doesn't have a CD/DVD player installed, but I still have an old player which I can connect using USB. Hopefully, it still works!

JBR said:

...but I still have an old player which I can connect using USB. Hopefully, it still works!

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You might consider copying all CD and DVD install contents to a folder on your hard drive / SSD drive of your PC, that is dedicated for installation purposes. That's how I am doing it already for years.

And then make backups to external drives or USB-flash drives, to make sure that when your hard drive / SSD drive might fail, you still have the installation packages available.

The keys you can write into little text files, I am always exporting them to pdf, which I can encrypt quite easily. So no one else but me can open the files with installation keys in it, even if it would be on a portable device that I would lose somewhere.

Thank you to all who have tried to help me.
Unfortunately, my old DVD player no longer seems to connect to my computer, so I cannot try to re-install Word 2007 from my disc to the computer.
Having wasted most of the day without success, I think that the best option is to take my computer and the DVD disc into a computer repair specialist and see if he can properly re-install the software.

You could order any USB DVD/CD Rewritable drive for very little money and try to read the install disk from there.
Would cost you about £ 20-30 (I got prizes from Amazon just a moment ago).
Will certainly be cheaper than a computer repair specialist.
And if you don't succeed, you would any way have the drive as spare part to read other DVDs or CDs.

Firstly, I'd like to thank everyone who troubled to offer me advice and support. However, I had considered purchasing a new Microsoft Office installation but, at the cost of £85 per year(!) I instantly decided against it. I have, instead, decided to install a new LibreOffice set of applications. This is free, although I intend to send a reasonable donation. I have used LibreOffice before, but my old installation is asking for an updated version.
Much better value than Office!

I think that's a good decision. Stay using Office 2007 has it's risks, especially because it was not updated since a long time, so known vulnerabilties will not be solved.

People who like to compromize computers use those known vulnerabilties to put hacks in document files and send them by mail to victims or put them on the Internet. Which is not that bad if you are aware of that and never click a link in a mail, but it might happen that some relative or friend sends you a Word, Excel or Powerpoint file while his system is hacked (or the mail does not come from that person at all).

I have been using Office 2003 for many years, but stepped over to Softmaker Office Pro 2021, for which they had an offer recently.
That package is based upon Libre Office, but does not bring all those fonts I don't like to be in my system.
And it's somewhat simpler to use, Libre Office is quite complicated when you want to have a simple text and spreadsheet editor program without many extra options.

If you are satisfied with the use of Libre Office then that's the favorite app for you!

JBR said:

What do you think my best course of action should be?

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Use Revo uninstaller and uninstall it. And ask any friend if you can borrow an external CD/DVD drive.

If there's a conflict, then install Office 2007 again. I assume you still have the 2007 disk or USB stick, correct?

You seem to be making this more difficult than it is.

cheaterslick said:

Use Revo uninstaller and uninstall it. If there's a conflict, then install Office 2007 again. I assue you still have the disk or USB file, correct?

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That all passed the show already. Read answer #22. I suggest you read the answers first before posting an answer like this one.

Kees said:

That all passed the show already. Read answer #22. I suggest you read the answers first before posting an answer like this one.

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I have no problem reiterating it.

cheaterslick said:

I have no problem reiterating it.

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That's completely useless, because, as the OP has reported he cannot use his Office 2007 DVD anymore (and does not want to something about it), in #26 he wrote he already installed Libre Office!

That's all I want to write about it.

Kees said:

in #26 he wrote he already installed Libre Office!

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I didn't catch that part.

Well, another problem solved.

When I had Office 2007, I seem to remember when you used to use the old add/remove programs you could right click on Office 2007 in the list and you got 3 options. Configure it to use files on your system or from media (CD), uninstall it and Repair it. Just sayin'

JBR said:

Many thanks for admitting me to this forum.

Yesterday, suddenly without warning, when opening one of my saved MS Word files, I was presented with a completely new and apparently far less usable file. I have been using MS Word 2007 and it appears that this has now been overwritten with new MS Word software which I really do not like!

I have fiddled about as much as I can, and can now once again open my files in Word 2007. The problem is that it takes about a minute for it to load up, so at least I still seem to have the Word 2007 software on my computer.

I should like to remove completely the new Word software if that is possible, but retain the Word 2007 installation as I'm pretty sure that if I do such a thing I might end up removing all of the Word software and thus being unable to open any of my many Word documents.

I'd be very grateful for any technological advice.

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Have you ever considered trying OpenOffice? It's free, MS compatible and may solve your problem of reading older versions of MS Word docs.


www.openoffice.org/

@PCUser
In #26 the OP has already announced he installed Libre Office, which is a continued development of Open Office.

@JBR
Please mark this thread as solved!

I'm very pleased that my questions seem to have caused even more interest and I thank all parties for that. I am very happy with LibreOffice and have found it easy to use. I now need to look for the means of adding borders to vertical columns, but I'm sure it will come. Thanks again for your interest.

JBR said:

I am very happy with LibreOffice and have found it easy to use. I now need to look for the means of adding borders to vertical columns, but I'm sure it will come. Thanks again for your interest.

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I'm a long-term user of, initially, OpenOffice and then switching to LibreOffice. I used to in the past install the Word component of MS Office 2003 (as well as running OpenOffice/LibreOffice). My only reason for installing it was to use the Find/Replace functionality it has for any complex replacements I wanted to do — this is way easier to use than the LibreOffice Find/Replace. But nowadays I don't even bother to install Word, go with LibreOffice and it is all fine.

When you refer (in an earlier post) to soffice.exe you should know that this is LibreOffice. If you launch LibreOffice Writer and then Windows Task Manager you will see two processes listed in Task Manager 'soffice.bin' and 'soffice.exe' both of those processes belong to LibreOffice and both will run if you are doing anything at all in any component of LibreOffice. I think that the naming of those stems from when Star Office was produced, a precursor to what later became OpenOffice.

For your future reference there is an excellent forum that is dedicated to OpenOffice and LibreOffice here: Apache OpenOffice Community Forum They are really helpful there and give good guidance if you run into a sticky problem with OpenOffice or LibreOffice. There is also Ask LibreOffice but I find that less user friendly than OpenOffice.org — that said they do solve problems/issues there too and might be more useful for users whose native language is not English.

A 'pro' tip for using LibreOffice is to make it your sworn duty to learn at least the basics of using 'Templates' and 'Styles'. Do that and you will be well rewarded in your use of LibreOffice.

PCUser said:

Have you ever considered trying OpenOffice? It's free, MS compatible and may solve your problem of reading older versions of MS Word docs.

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This isn't particularly good advice nowadays. OpenOffice is cruising into obsolescence now. Some detail on this can be read here: [Tutorial] Considering a Switch from OpenOffice to LibreOffice? Some Useful Information

If you are wanting to try a native Open Document Format (ODF) office suite then LibreOffice is the way to go.

Thank you BuddhaNature.
I have located Apache Open Office and shall have a look there, as I am now trying to find the best way to insert column dividers into a list I have since created in LibreOffice. Busy right now, but I shall come back to it when I have more time.

Kees said:

You might consider copying all CD and DVD install contents to a folder on your hard drive / SSD drive of your PC, that is dedicated for installation purposes. That's how I am doing it already for years.

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Sorry. I'm afraid I may have missed this advice. I do have an installation dvd for re-installing MS Office, and tried to download it via an external DVD reader plugged into my laptop by USB. Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to work.