XP office gone - how do i reinstall from scratch?

[cheshirechick]

I have had a problem that stemmed from a 'free trial of office 2010'. when the trial ran out I decided I didn't like it and followed the instructions for removing it and reverted back to office xp. or not.

The few original office xp files that remained were badly corrupted and binned promptly by my anti-virus software, but most were removed during the process of trying to revert back. I seem to be left with only the update files and not the base program files.

I still know my office key but cannot find anywhere offering a full download of the programs. I'm reluctant to pay for programs that I already have a licence for. office came preloaded on my laptop so I don't have the discs. So far pcworld seem pretty unhelpful at requests for them to provide me with a CD to replace it.

Is there a website that offers a download? I can only find service packs which I understand are only updates/fixes and not the programs themselves.

I have been using openoffice in the interim before anyone suggests it and while it'll do for now there are many features missing from it that I use regularly in office.

Can anyone help?

[stans4]

I have had a problem that stemmed from a 'free trial of office 2010'. when the trial ran out I decided I didn't like it and followed the instructions for removing it and reverted back to office xp. or not.

The few original office xp files that remained were badly corrupted and binned promptly by my anti-virus software, but most were removed during the process of trying to revert back. I seem to be left with only the update files and not the base program files.

I still know my office key but cannot find anywhere offering a full download of the programs. I'm reluctant to pay for programs that I already have a licence for. office came preloaded on my laptop so I don't have the discs. So far pcworld seem pretty unhelpful at requests for them to provide me with a CD to replace it.

Is there a website that offers a download? I can only find service packs which I understand are only updates/fixes and not the programs themselves.

I have been using openoffice in the interim before anyone suggests it and while it'll do for now there are many features missing from it that I use regularly in office.

Can anyone help?

Only way I can see to get the "free trial" version back is to do a system restore, if your laptop has that feature. I know the Acer I have has a hidden partition where all the starter software gets put, has a utility to zap the whole working partition and put it back to as-delivered condition. There's also a utility that gets run at first startup that will burn restore CD/DVDs that allow restoring just parts of the initial software. If you've still got that, then you can probably restore the trial version. You'd have to look at your docs to see. If you've zapped your hard drive or swapped for another, start looking on the auction sites. Any downloads you might find, short of off the MSDN subscription site, are going to be suspect. Office XP is long out of support, you probably can't even get replacement discs from MS anymore. If you never paid for the real deal after the free trial ran out, your key is useless anyway.

One of the very first things I do with a new laptop/netbook is to extract the hard drive and run an image backup. Then I can get back to square one if I need to. After that, I partition the thing the way I want, not the way the OEM thought it should be.

Stan