Question Microsoft Office after Windows 10 upgrade?

THpapi

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Hey I'm trying to help out a neighbor with their PC, they want to upgrade to windows 10 from an older version, and I'm concerned about their office apps. Its an older version of office for sure. If I upgrade the computer to Windows 10, are they going to completely lose their old license of MS Office and have to buy a 365 subscription, or will they be able to recover their old outdated but already paid for apps after logging into their MS account in Windows 10?
 

THpapi

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Thanks for the help! Turns out its an old optiplex 380 with 3 gigs of RAM, so I'm not even going to update it to 10. If I slap a sata 2.5" in this puppy, will it let me do a factory reset but choose the sata 2.5" as my boot drive? maybe should I close this and start a new thread? lol
 

USAFRet

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Thanks for the help! Turns out its an old optiplex 380 with 3 gigs of RAM, so I'm not even going to update it to 10. If I slap a sata 2.5" in this puppy, will it let me do a factory reset but choose the sata 2.5" as my boot drive? maybe should I close this and start a new thread? lol
No, you can't 'factory reset' to a different drive.

Either a full clone from old to new, or a fresh OS install on the new drive.
 

Zerk2012

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Thanks for the help! Turns out its an old optiplex 380 with 3 gigs of RAM, so I'm not even going to update it to 10. If I slap a sata 2.5" in this puppy, will it let me do a factory reset but choose the sata 2.5" as my boot drive? maybe should I close this and start a new thread? lol
You should be able to just clone the old drive to the new drive. You are talking about using a 2.5 SSD correct.
 

THpapi

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You should be able to just clone the old drive to the new drive. You are talking about using a 2.5 SSD correct.
Factory reset doesn't work that way.
You'll have to clone source drive to new target drive.
Suggest you upgrade to SSD instead.
Thanks for the help! Yes I'm referring to a 2.5" Sata SSD. So clone the HDD to the SSD. Then change boot order? and at that point I can reformat the old HDD? sound like a good plan? Or should I clone to the 2.5" SSD, then boot on the SSD, and do a factory reset at that point? Its an old system and I'd like to wipe it rather than just skim through and delete stuff, thats why I keep asking about a factory reset, and I don't want to just windows 10 installation media to do so because I want to keep windows 7 on it, I think windows 10 would probably bog it down too much.
 

THpapi

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I've never wiped a system before and kept the legacy OS, thats what makes this weird, usually I'd wipe it and put windows 10 on the SSD but I want to keep windows 7 on it, and boot 7 off the SSD.
 

USAFRet

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No I don't have the media..... is there a way for me to create windows 7 media like they have the creation tool for windows 10? Thats what I normally use.... They actually have an OEM key, I would just need the files.
If that is still the original OEM install, there may be a function in there for you to create a DVD or USB from that.
Look in your user manual for how to invoke that.
 
Google says the optiplex were made in 1993
With regards to your office program .... i asked microsoft help about this when i was getting a new pc.
If the office program is registered on his microsoft account you must uninstall it then do whatever you want to the set up and then go back to the microsoft account and re download it.
If the software is on a disc and not on the microsoft site just re-install it and when you try to activate word via the internet it might tell you the program is past its number of uses and it will stop you , if that happens close/reopen word and chose activate by phone , you dont speak to a person just listen to the instructions.
 

USAFRet

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Google says the optiplex were made in 1993
With regards to your office program .... i asked microsoft help about this when i was getting a new pc.
If the office program is registered on his microsoft account you must uninstall it then do whatever you want to the set up and then go back to the microsoft account and re download it.
If the software is on a disc and not on the microsoft site just re-install it and when you try to activate word via the internet it might tell you the program is past its number of uses and it will stop you , if that happens close/reopen word and chose activate by phone , you dont speak to a person just listen to the instructions.
ANd we still have no idea of which Office version this is.
 

THpapi

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ANd we still have no idea of which Office version this is.
Office isn't even on the computer. At this point its really about seeing if I could get this thing to boot windows 7 off of a new SSD. Would I need to get my hands on a windows 7 installation disk? Or would the cloning feature allow me to migrate windows 7 to the SSD, and then use a factory reset feature at that point to get a fresh install, instead of having a clone of a 13 year old harddrive.
 

USAFRet

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Office isn't even on the computer. At this point its really about seeing if I could get this thing to boot windows 7 off of a new SSD. Would I need to get my hands on a windows 7 installation disk? Or would the cloning feature allow me to migrate windows 7 to the SSD, and then use a factory reset feature at that point to get a fresh install, instead of having a clone of a 13 year old harddrive.
First, look in the user manual and see if you can create a USB or DVD to do a "factory reset/reinstall" with.
If available, that will allow you to do this on a whole new drive.

That is the point of the original Factory Reset partition.
The manufacturer must give you the means to write to a whole new drive, in case the original drive fails.
But, you must create that DVD or USB first.

Or, we can look into a clone operation.
 

THpapi

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First, look in the user manual and see if you can create a USB or DVD to do a "factory reset/reinstall" with.
If available, that will allow you to do this on a whole new drive.

That is the point of the original Factory Reset partition.
The manufacturer must give you the means to write to a whole new drive, in case the original drive fails.
But, you must create that DVD or USB first.

Or, we can look into a clone operation.
Thanks will give this a shot
 

THpapi

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Mar 27, 2019
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First, look in the user manual and see if you can create a USB or DVD to do a "factory reset/reinstall" with.
If available, that will allow you to do this on a whole new drive.

That is the point of the original Factory Reset partition.
The manufacturer must give you the means to write to a whole new drive, in case the original drive fails.
But, you must create that DVD or USB first.

Or, we can look into a clone operation.

Ive found the Service manual online as well as a User Manual, It has instructions for replacing the hard drive but its just instructions on physcially replacing it, makes no mention of backing up/resetting or creating media.... Thanks for your help with this I'm going to keep researching while I wait for the SSD t o get here in the mail. I think Cloning might be our best bet. I'm wondering once we get the clone, will we able to do a clean reinstall afterwards? We should right?
 

USAFRet

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Ive found the Service manual online as well as a User Manual, It has instructions for replacing the hard drive but its just instructions on physcially replacing it, makes no mention of backing up/resetting or creating media.... Thanks for your help with this I'm going to keep researching while I wait for the SSD t o get here in the mail. I think Cloning might be our best bet. I'm wondering once we get the clone, will we able to do a clean reinstall afterwards? We should right?
Link to these manuals?


Cloning only really works from a 100% fully functioning drive and OS.
If there are any issues, you may be just moving the problem.
 

THpapi

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Link to these manuals?


Cloning only really works from a 100% fully functioning drive and OS.
If there are any issues, you may be just moving the problem.

DELL OPTIPLEX 380 SERVICE MANUAL Pdf Download | ManualsLib

Sorry I let this thread sit, but I was waiting for the SSD to come in and it took forever, just came in. I installed it and initialized it, and then used windows 7 built in tool to create a system image on it. But then when I tried to boot from it it wasn't bootable.... so now I'm really trying to figure out how to create a bootable image on this SSD. The old HDD is actually working fine and everything, the OS isn't corrupt. Its just slow and you can hear it spin so I'm trying to upgrade it to this SSD.
 

Co BIY

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I was able to run my older Microsoft Office versions on laptops that I had updated from Windows 7 to 10. I used an ISO file image, from the Microsoft download site, loaded and then enabled with the OEM key. It was not too difficult.
 

THpapi

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I was able to run my older Microsoft Office versions on laptops that I had updated from Windows 7 to 10. I used an ISO file image, from the Microsoft download site, loaded and then enabled with the OEM key. It was not too difficult.
The windows 7 download is no longer available from Microsoft, don't want to update to 10 because dual core system with 3gb of RAM, would actually run way worse in 10. I think I need to create a repair CD/DVD thats an option, I bet I can boot from that and reinstall windows 7 onto the SSD... I just need to find a CD or DVD now..... unless anyone else has better ideas?
 

THpapi

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I got so close yall... I found a windows 7 repair disk iso on some sketchy site, dl'd it, mounted it to a USB using a sketchy 3rd party media creation tool, since Microsoft supports none of this anymore, got the repair tool to boot! It found the system image on the SSD, was about to restore, and then got hit with "the selected system image cannot be restored in this recovery environment"......... and its asking me to insert the repair disk............. The USB its currently booted on is supposed to be the repair disk lmao... I guess I'll try to find a CD ROM somewhere tomorrow and make a legit repair disk....