[slowmotionra1n]

Hi and thank you in advance for any help you can give me!

I'm running Office 2003 on Windows XP. Word works fine, but every time I try to start up Excel, the program opens normally and after a few seconds an error message pops up that says:

"You have not entered a valid Product Key. Please check the number located on the sticker on the back of the CD case or on your Certificate of Authenticity."

I installed this about two years ago I think, so I don't understand why this is happening because I didn't enter any product keys today.

So I click "OK" and another box says "Preparing to install..."

and then I get the box where I'm supposed to enter my User name, Initials, and Organization, and under that it says "In the boxes below, type your 25-character Product Key. You will find this number on the sticker on the back of the CD case or on your Certificate of Authenticity." and then it says "Product Key:" with the little boxes where I'm supposed to enter the product key.

So I call home and get the product key on the CD from my dad, and I enter it (checking for accuracy about 5 times) and every time I do, it says "You have not entered a valid Product Key. Please check the number located on..." etc, etc, etc.

I'm baffled. I don't understand what the problem is. Please, please help! Any insights would be GREATLY, GREATLY APPRECIATED!!!!

I would just uninstall and reinstall, but I'm not going to have access to the disk for probably about two weeks (since it's at home and i am not) and I need to do things for work ASAP. If there's any other way to get around this or if I can track down what's causing it, it would save me a lot of sanity.

Thanks again,
Jessica

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Are you using the right key? You need the Office product key, not the key for Microsoft Windows which is probably stuck on the top/back/side of the case. That key won't work. The Office key is usually on a yellow label on the back of the Office CD if you bought it OEM.

Failing that, OpenOffice has its own spreadsheet which will open Excel files so you're not totally stuffed A reinstall would probably solve the problem actually.

[Neil Jones]

Are you using the right key? You need the Office product key, not the key for Microsoft Windows which is probably stuck on the top/back/side of the case. That key won't work. The Office key is usually on a yellow label on the back of the Office CD if you bought it OEM.

Failing that, OpenOffice has its own spreadsheet which will open Excel files so you're not totally stuffed A reinstall would probably solve the problem actually.

[slowmotionra1n]

No, I'm 100% definitely using the right one, on the Office CD. Thanks for your help, I'm gonna have them mail me the CD so I can do the reinstall.