Did you know that most versions of Microsoft Office allow you to use the same license on a Desktop and a Laptop PC?

You can select and view the license agreement for your specific version of Office using the following link:

Find End User License Terms

As an example, the EULA (End User License Agreement) for Office 2007 Professional states the following:

INSTALLATION AND USE RIGHTS. Before you use the software under a license, you must assign that license to one device. That device is the “licensed device”. A hardware partition or blade is considered to be a separate device.

a. Licensed Device. You may install and use one copy of the software on the licensed device.

b. Portable Device. You may install another copy on a portable device for use by the single primary user of the licensed device.

c. Separation of Components. The components of the software are licensed as a single unit. You may not separate the components and install them on different devices.

Have you ever wanted to open multiple PowerPoint or Excel windows, but found that they always open up within the one window?    Yes, you can look at two open files, but they’re always within the same window.

The problem is, Powerpoint and Excel limit one instance of the program to each logged-in user.   Here’s an inspired “bodge” to get around the limitation!

1) Create a new local user account, say “office”

2) Use the built in “runas” account to start the program as this new user:

runas /user:office “c:\program files\microsoft office\office12\powerpoint.exe”

You can do this with multiple usernames to create multiple instances!

I’m often being asked this.   People assume that Office XP will only work with Windows XP – a cunning marketing plan by MS?

Office XP will run on Windows Vista fine.