Don't have my microsoft word product key-am I screwed?

noir_blood

So yesterday my computer died on me. Total shutdown, lots of files lost, etc. Because I'm apparently a walking cliche, this happened the day before I needed to turn in a story to my creative writing class, so I went and bought a new one that same night.

I have my 2007 microsoft office student version cd, but unfortunately, I don't have that little slip of paper that had the product key. The stupid thing is that in my old comp I even saved a doc with that info among others.

Is there any way to still use this cd, or is my only option buying a new one?

SniperGuy

I'm not sure on the key, but www.openoffice.org can help you if you're in a pinch for a word processor/powerpoint/whatever.

Chanus

Open Office is pretty great, considering it's about infinitely cheaper than Microsoft Office and does the exact same thing.

As for getting the product key, you can try calling Microsoft, if you had registered the product... but I think you need to prove you purchased it (not sure, never done it).

If you can recover your registry from your old computer, the product key will be stored in there.

Other than that, just go with OpenOffice.

Echo

Is the work done? If you don't actually need to edit it and just print it, Word Viewer is free to download.

Otherwise, as others have said: OpenOffice is nice and can open most Word files just fine unless there's too much special layout stuff.

Beazle

You can download Office 2007 trial version and use it for 30 days. That should give you enough time to figure out what you can do with your current version. If your old hard drive is not completely dead you can get an external enclosure to put it is so you can get the file off with your key.

corky842

This should work to get your key back (assuming the drive isn't dead).

mkissin

In a similar situation, I used http://magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/.

It can load the registry hive of another Windows installation, so it should be able to pull the key off your dead hard drive.

Fallingman

If you call microsoft, you might be surprised. I did it for windows and it wasn't until I hung up that I realised that they had no way of knowing if I was genuine... They didnt even ask.