Excel 2002 won't activate

Question

I installed Excel 2002 on my Windows 7 machine and activated it. I then uninstalled Excel 2002 and installed the Office 2010 trial to see if it's worth paying for the upgrade (I don't like it btw). I uninstalled the Office 2010 trial, deleted the registry keys and have installed Excel 2002 again. Now, when I try to activate Excel 2002 online, I get an error:

"Cannot connect to the Microsoft Activation server. Make sure your connection to the internet is working. Either try again later, or select the Telephone option in the Microsoft Activation Wizard and follow the instructions provided."

I then try the Telephone option, select my country (United States) but it doesn't provide me a number to call....If I try another country it still doesn't give me a number to dial.

Every time I open Excel I get the prompt to activate Excel. What do I do?

Answer 1

I don't think you'll get much help from Microsoft - Support for Excel 2002 ended in July 2006. Extended support ended in July 2011. http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-us&p1=1743&x=23&y=13

Sounds like your machine has gotten into a state that'll be hard to track down and resolve. In situations like this, I usually suggest backing up all your data and reinstalling Windows & your apps.

And FWIW, I recommend moving to Excel 2010 - while it'll take a little time and patience to learn where everything is, the performance & stability improvements alone make it FAR superior to 2002.

Also, the ribbon, whilst initially confusing to some turns out to be one of the best improvements to Office that Microsoft have made in years! Try hovering over the formatting options before clicking - great way to preview your formatting choices before comitting them to your spreadsheets!

HTH.

Answer 2

Best bet is to use System Restore to go back to before you installed the Office 2010 trial.

Answer 3

First, try Brian's suggestion of using the System restore to roll back to your pre Office 2010 state. You can get more details here:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/System-Restore-frequently-asked-questions

If that doesn't work, uninstall your office 2002, then use this link to do the complete removal of Office 2010 components.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

After that reinstall your Office 2002, hopefully whatever was conflicting is resolved at that point.