Word vs Works

July 13, 2004 9:12 AM

LudditeFilter: My new laptop came with MS Works and I hate it. I'm pining for my trusty Word. Is there a way to copy the program from my old computer and install it on the new one? I no longer have any of the original discs.
posted by CunningLinguist to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

I just had this same problem - had to reinstall everything, or...reobtain them. All those damn .dlls and registry entries.

On the just-got-a-new-computer note, if anyone could tell me how to transfer emails and an address book from Outlook Express on one computer to Outlook on another, I'd be much obliged as well.
posted by gottabefunky at 9:20 AM on July 13, 2004

Best answer: No, you pretty much need to install from disks. If you have Office XP, you might not be able to re-authorize it for use on the new computer, though.
posted by cmonkey at 9:58 AM on July 13, 2004

You could try OpenOffice. I recently bought a new laptop, and OpenOffice allowed me to save the money I would have spent on MS Word while still having good word-processing capacity and no compatibility trouble.
posted by COBRA! at 10:12 AM on July 13, 2004

gottabefunky ... try running migwiz ... it's the windows migration wizard, and it will let you move all of your personal data from one computer to another.
posted by crunchland at 10:53 AM on July 13, 2004

Response by poster: This is depressing. Isn't there some clever way around? AskMe has always come through for me before.
posted by CunningLinguist at 12:26 PM on July 13, 2004

gottabefunky, you should be able to export all your data from Outlook Express into a .pst or comma-delimited file which you cna then import into Outlook. I say should, because the one time I tried this, I found that the e-mails could be transferred but not the contacts, because Outlook Express and Outlook use vastly different formats for these.
posted by dg at 3:58 PM on July 13, 2004

I'm willing to bet a reasonably Windows-experienced technician could do it through many, many hours of trial and error, but an experienced Windows technician would also know it's a lot easier to install from media.

Unfortunately, most major Windows applications drop crap all over the machine: into application directories, the %WINNT% directory, %WINNT%\system32, Common directories, a couple of different hives of registry, pretty much everywhere. Locating all this crud and copying it over to another machine -- by hand -- would be an undertaking of enormous proportions without access to the installer's scripts.

If you've still got your old registration keys, it shouldn't be hard to find media from which to install something like Word. In fact, it's possible that Microsoft will sell you replacement media for about ten or twenty bucks if you're a legitimate registered user.

Otherwise, just pick up OpenOffice.org. It's Good Enough.
posted by majick at 7:16 PM on July 13, 2004

Various forms of P2P (shh!) can get you installable versions of your favorite $BIGNAME software. If you get the same approximate version, you may be able to enter your license information from the old computer at the time of install, or you may not -- especially $REDMOND are notorious for fifteen different versions (OEM, retail, student, etc.) with incompatible license-number ranges. But it's worth a try, and you can consider it fair use, I suppose.
posted by dhartung at 12:57 AM on July 15, 2004