Office 2007

[#1]

My son bought a new laptop approx 12-18 months ago. It came with Office 2007 already installed. He is at present travelling in Australia with laptop, but all of a sudden none of the Office 2007 contents work. According to the e-mail he has sent me, the microsoft office applications have now been disabled. When he opens any MO app it prompts him to enter the 25 digit key code to register microsoft office on the laptop. He has entered this code numerous times but it always claims that it is incorrect even though he knows it is not. Previously this has not been a problem and he has been able to continue but now it locks the programmes so that he cant use them for anything. He doesn't have any way of re-installing Office 2007, unless there is something hidden on  the laptop, that he could get at (am I getting into the world of science fiction now?).
Has anyone any idea what may have gone wrong?
Would/could System Restore correct this or would it make things worse? How do you use System Restore? I've never used it myself.
Thanks for any help

[#2]

Not sure about Office 2007 specifically - so won't guess.
But for system restore easiest way to learn is the help system - just search for system restore.
If he needs to work urgently on files - they can all be opened in OpenOffice a free open source equivalent. http://www.openoffice.org/

[#3]

Microsoft offers free trial copies of Office 2007 which can be downloaded and installed ( http://trial.trymicrosoftoffice.com/trialukireland/product.aspx?sku=3082920&culture=en-GB ) but I doubt if it would help.  Office 2007 comes pre-installed on many new computers but what you get is almost always a 60 day free trial version.  If your son subsequently bought a product key then this will NOT be the key code on the sticker on the laptop; that is the product key for Windows.  So then the question is, how does your son know what his product key is?  If it was supplied by email, does he have the email?  If hew bought an installation disk, where is that (and the box it came in)? 

[#4]

Indeed, and after the trial period you can typically use it another 25 times before it locks you out.
If he really did buy the license then a phone call to  Microsoft (usually free from anywhere in the world) will get it sorted out. The contact numbers are usually available via a link from whatever message is blocking access.

[#5]

Thanks for that everyone. I'll contact my son and ask those questions. If it turns out he only had the trial thing and didn't realise he needed to get a full licence for it, then the questions I need answered would be how to convert it to a fully licenced thing, and how much would the licence cost?
I will also try to get him to put OpenOffice on his laptop.
Again thanks

[#6]

You might be able to tell if you can find any record of the original sale.
Office is VERY expensive, unless you get the Basic or Home/Student Editions.
Basic is a limited business version costing about £100 and I've only ever seen it sold with Dell machines as a pre-ordered (i.e. OEM) option.
Home & Student is widely available for about £80 or so.
Any other editions are of the order of £200 to £300.
So, unless it was a very expensive laptop, you'll be able to tell from the price if anything was actually included. Microsoft always supply a separate card to confirm the license and supply the product key, with instructions on how to activate it.

[#7]

Home and Student is about £60 from Amazon but it doesn't include Outlook 2007
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_38577465_4/026-0320514-7838051?ie=UTF8&docId=10...
Now if you or a relative is a student this is much cheaper for the full version
http://www.software4students.co.uk/

[#8]

Thanks everyone. I'll see what can be done.
Happy new year to you

[#9]

I bought a laptop in the US which had a 90 day free trial of Office 2007.  When the trial ran out it still continued to work and it still is - over a year later