Take Word off an XP disk?

November 20, 2007 4:10 PM

Is it possible to download Word off an XP disk without reinstalling XP in its entirety?

I have a new computer with XP on it but no Microsoft Word. I also have an old XP disk that does have Word included on it, if I remember correctly. Is there a way to boot up this XP disk and only take Word off of it without risking losing all my files/settings by reinstalling the whole OS?

posted by prior to computers & internet (10 comments total)

I assume your talking about Microsoft Word?

AFAIK, unless the disk you have is a system restore disk from an OEM, MS Word, or MS Office has never been included with an Operating system Disk.
posted by tradeer33 at 4:17 PM on November 20, 2007

Just put the old CD in a drive, browse it and see if you can find the installer for Word.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 4:18 PM on November 20, 2007

Have you considered installing OpenOffice?
posted by gnutron at 4:25 PM on November 20, 2007

Does anyone know if OpenOffice works with Microsoft Word's track changes feature in a relatively seamless way? I do freelance editing and my clients all use MS Word and require track changes. Thanks!
posted by prior at 4:28 PM on November 20, 2007

prior, seems like there was already an AskMe about that very question.
posted by gnutron at 4:51 PM on November 20, 2007

Seamless, I'd have to say say hardly, though my reservation may just be a visual thing (Word certainly looks prettier tracking changes). I have successfully gotten away with it on, for example, a big multilingual NGO report edited by at least five other authors without anyone seeming to notice I did my bit on OpenOffice under Linux.
posted by Abiezer at 4:58 PM on November 20, 2007

I doubt you have a windows install disc with both xp and office on it. You might be thinking MS Works. I believe there were a few xp discs pressed with that a few years back.
posted by damn dirty ape at 5:26 PM on November 20, 2007

Just put the CD in (as Foci said). If it isn't booting, it isn't going to install anything automatically. If you do indeed have an OEM bundle of applications on that CD, you will get an install menu of some kind that you can navigate.

But I do doubt that you have Word on an XP disk.
posted by dhartung at 5:47 PM on November 20, 2007

Unless you're talking about MSWrite, which is built-in to the OS, and will open Word documents. But it doesn't sound like you are, I don't think. (Also, just for the future, you don't 'download' things from a disc or a local network, you typically install, copy or move. 'Download' is used pretty much exclusively to mean 'from the internet'.)
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:53 PM on November 20, 2007

No Windows install disk from Microsoft has ever included Word. A hardware manufacturer's system restore disk may include Windows and Word, but it is difficult to imagine a scenario where software engineers would fail to prevent, let alone make it easy, to do what you hope to do.

I have also used OpenOffice's track changes functions (version 2.2, on Linux) to collaborate with someone using Word (on a Mac, unknown version), without any problems.
posted by gum at 10:53 PM on November 20, 2007