Office 2007 Trial + Activation = Disaster

Urban myth: PC World staffers never have software hassles. Everything works right the first time, and we have special immunity from Microsoft Office nightmares. Pardon me for a minute while I check Snopes -- and LOL.

My newsletter and blog editor, Kim, has over 10 years under her belt at PC World and despite my teasing her, she's not a novice user. Yet Office 2007, a creation of the evil Cylons, first cousins to the Redmond Empire, (oh, come on, Battlestar Galactica?) brought Kim to her knees. In her own words, here's the story:

The Trial Begins
My ailing IBM ThinkPad T43 was threatening to call it quits. It was slow, and the drive was filled to the brim. So I was anxious to replace it and bought a brand-new Lenovo ThinkPad T61.

One hitch: I have to share the laptop with my husband and he didn't want Office 2007 preinstalled. That's because through work, he was getting a free Home Use copy from Microsoft. He said it'd be a few weeks until we'd see the install disc.

No problem, I thought… I'll just install the trial version that comes loaded on the ThinkPad. So I fired up the Activation Assistant for Office 2007 and got the 60-day trial running. My husband was horrified when he discovered what I'd done. He works in IS at a large company and has had serious issues with trial versions of Office -- and particularly with the Activation Assistant.

Just a couple days later we received the licensed copy of Office Enterprise 2007. After uninstalling the trial version, I successfully installed a clean version of the Office suite and was up and running. Things were good and after a few days, I uninstalled the Activation Assistant, just to be safe.

All would have likely been well had I not had a nasty run-in with a program that I was reviewing a few days later. To set things to rights, I used XP's System Restore and selected a Restore Point just before I'd installed the troublesome app.

Hell in a Hand Basket
The next time I tried to run Word and Excel, the supposedly nonexistent Activation Assistant kicked in and tried to install the equally nonexistent trial version of Office. The silly thing chugged away until it finally launched the licensed apps.

I checked Add and Remove Programs, and sure thing, Office 2007 was showing up again. I tried uninstalling it, but got a message saying the installation was corrupt and I needed to reinstall the program in order to uninstall it.

Of course, Lenovo provides no backup discs with its ThinkPads, so I couldn't reinstall the trial version. I checked Add and Remove again--Activation Assistant was showing up, even though it should have been uninstalled. And of course I couldn't uninstall it, because, well, you get the idea.

Help Me, Somebody
Microsoft Office Online tech support was no help whatsoever. Even though I explained the problem thoroughly, the same rep kept telling me to uninstall the trial program before installing Enterprise. His solution? A link to a Microsoft tech support page that offered support for the low, low price of $99 per request.

Luckily, I had the ear of Bass, the King of Kvetchers (See How to Fix the Biggest PC Annoyances) and he hooked me up with a buddy at Microsoft. That got me a call from Joe, a Microsoft Global Escalation Manager.

Joe helped me through the arduous task of getting Office running properly. It took over 90 minutes, but we finally killed the trial version of Office 2007 and disabled the Activation Assistant.

New Activation Assistant for Office 2007 installer.

Activation Assistant's Dirty Little Secret
It turns out that the Activation Assistant for Office 2007 has been a serious hassle for Microsoft. According to Joe, the Activation Assistant accounts for the great majority of tech-support calls. He wasn't specific, but said that the program is basically flawed. Apparently there's a fix coming in Office 14.

In fact, the Activation Assistant is so troublesome that when I suggested that we just reinstall the dang thing, he flat-out refused. He said that would likely cause more problems--and I don't argue with escalation managers...

Warning, Will Robinson
My advice is to never install the trial version of Office 2007 that's included on a new notebook or desktop. In fact, remove it from your new machine altogether--that and its evil twin, the Activation Assistant. (You can use the fee PC De-Crapifier) If you want Office, download and install the full version or order a disc. The temporary convenience just isn't worth it.

Now that Word 2007 is up and running, I can get back to editing Bass's blogs.

Talkback
Have something to say about Kim's Office 2007 tale of woe? You can use Comments below or if you'd prefer, fire an e-mail right into my inbox.

Actual image of user experiencing
Activation Assistant for Office 2007.
(Click here if the image isn't animated.)

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