Best practices for uninstalling older versions of Office & reinstalling

December 1, 2018 4:32 PM

We have 6 windows machines (2 desktops & 4 laptops) running Office 2007 or 2010. These versions of Office were bought from the UK or US on disc, with 3 installations allowed per disc. We are based in Japan for the time being, in case this has any bearing on things.

All of the machines will need replacing soon. What I hope to be able to do is to uninstall the copies of Office from their current machines, and then reinstall them onto the new ones as we get them.

Is this possible these days? If so, how to do it smoothly? Online searches tend to be for newer versions of Office, plus we had an issue last time we tried installing Office from a disc.

On a new machine last year, a newly purchased version of Office ordered from the US wouldn't install smoothly on a Japanese bought computer, and needed a call to MS support to resolve.

What we don't want: Office 365, any kind of subscription service, Libre Office, etc.

Old machines are XP (100% offline) or Windows 7. New ones will be Windows 10.

Thanks for all suggestions.

posted by Calvin and the Duplicators to Computers & Internet (1 answer total)

Best answer: I'm afraid that the only way to find out whether it will work is to try doing the installation. Uninstalling on the old machines may help, but it's not a guarantee either (though if they're not connected to the internet, then there's really no point, as they wouldn't be able to contact the activation servers to report the uninstallation anyway). If you're abiding by the license terms, you should be able to get them activated though you may have to call up MS's activation support to do so.

One thing to keep in mind is that Office 2007 is no longer supported by MS, so you may be stuck if you can't get it to work.
posted by Aleyn at 11:21 PM on December 1, 2018