I downnloaded that from lowcostsoftware.co.uk (no connection except thrilled customer today) for £30. I'm not good at IT - really, if freaks me out doing stuff like this, but I was thinking positively 'this was going to be fine, so much simpler
'. I had uninstalled previous versions of Office, reinstalled the new one, all pretty straightforward... I was c12 digits into entering the c18 digit product key to activate it when the mains cable [?] on our street outside was damaged. A workman using power-tools to cut paving slabs outside screamed 'Agggghhh!' at the same instant, and all power to my home went.It came back again about 2 minutes later, so I re-booted my PC, now feeling highly stressed. Start-up had been corrupted by the outage, the Windows OS wouldn't load. I got the 4-pane Windows icon, the egg-timer, then a black screen and nothing...
I checked various thing, getting into Safe Mode, and the BIOS, and more, but couldn't find what was previously known as 'Boot from last known good configuration'. I concluded I had to do a 'Repair/Install', of the correct configuration (64-Bit etc), of the Windows OS, this I did by finding the Windows programme on the MS site, putting it on a RAM stick, and booting the PC from it. The same non-boot as above repeated. I sat blinking at the screen, feeling despondent
Then 10 seconds later, while contemplating Deep-IT-Hell it just loaded my wallpaper/screensaver, without me touching anything, and invited me to log-in to Windows!
'You cannot be serious!!!!!!' I checked various programmes, and so on, some looked ok. But of course Office had been uninstalled and not yet reinstalled. I opened a browser and it open pre-loaded with the Office License key page of the 12/18 digits I'd entered earlier still there!
I finished registering that and all is now back to normal! O-M-T-G that was not fun AT ALL.- I'll be spending the evening doing full back-ups of my PC and laptop!!
Take-aways:
Do full back-ups as routine.
Keep any license key numbers noted and safe, obviously not on the machine that later has a problem; but make it bullet-proof.
Tip: If anyone does not know for sure what their OS and Office [and/or Apple equivalents] software license keys are, I suggest finding them now, and keeping a note away from yr machine, in a safe place, perhaps in an e-mail you send to yourself and store carefully... so you can read it from say a web-based version of e-mail using your account.
Jeez, what a day, and now I do believe I've earned entitlement to Beer-O'Clock
