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#1
Office 2010 continually prompting for license key for "trial" programs
So I was looking into email clients, because I have Thunderbird on my laptop but I'd prefer something a bit more lightweight for my new desktop build. But when nothing I researched seemed to fit the bill, I thought I'd look at my Office 2010 install using the Change function in appwiz to see if Outlook was available for addition. Turns out it is - as are Access and Publisher, which also were not installed. So I figured, what the hell, go ahead and install all of them.
My Office 2010 license is the Home & Student edition, and I can't recall how many machines it was supposed to be licensed for, but to date I think this is the fifth machine I've put it on without complaint. I've just never tried to install anything but Word/Excel/Powerpoint yet.
Anyway, when Outlook first loaded it prompted me for the license key. I thought this was a bit weird, but I entered it and it said configuration was successful (though for some reason it generated a duplicate set of shortcuts for all my Office apps on desktop, renamed exactly the way I made my first set). Then Outlook tried to launch proper, and I ran into issues getting it to connect to my Gmail for awhile (I know, I know - it's a holdover from years ago and I'm going to switch to something less spyware-y shortly). Once I gave up on that effort I happened to try launching Outlook again, and I got prompted for the license key a second time.
Ran Access... got prompted for license key. Put it in, Access launched. Closed Access, launched again, bam, license key prompt. Ran Outlook again, bam, license key prompt. It never gave me any error message on activation, just went right through every time, but it never seemed to take (and every once in awhile I got another duplicate set of desktop shortcuts for no reason). If I cancelled the license key prompt it just told me the program couldn't start.
At that point I figured I'd uninstall the whole suite and reinstall with all the apps in place from the start. That's when I learned that Outlook, Access and Publisher were only included with "(Trial)" next to them in the customization screen (something which did not appear when I ran the Change command on the initial install). So I haven't bothered reinstalling them yet.
So, questions are as follows:
- If I ever got these "trial" apps to work properly, would they stop working after awhile? Or - remote possibility - would they continue to work due to Office 2010 being out of support now? I don't intend to pay anything for this, so if this whole thing is a fool's errand, then I'm happy to drop it.
- If they are able to work, then what was the deal with the recurring license key prompts?
- If they won't work - what's everyone's preferred email client for Win7 x64? Personally, the only features I need are routing rules and the ability to send HTML email if necessary. Otherwise I'm fine with something lightweight and minimalist. (Better question for the email board, I know, but I figured I should address the Office issue first)
Thanks in advance.