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Say if my HDD has three partitions, two of these three partitions have been installed with Windows 7 and 10, and there is one parition left for sharing photos between the two Windows. Say if I want to use Microsoft Office, that means I need to install Microsoft Office in one of these two Windows.

So, I am wondering if it is possible to install Microsoft Office (e.g. MS Office 2007) for once so that I will be able to use MS Office 2007 in both Windows?

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    I don't think that you can do that. The OS has to have all the registry entries, etc. And that happens only with a proper installation.
    – whs
    Feb 1, 2016 at 18:16
  • Office uses the registry a good deal. Your specific example, of Office, wouldn't not be possible.
    – Ramhound
    Feb 1, 2016 at 20:47

2 Answers 2

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What you could try is to install it in one of the partitions (say, Windows 10) and then again in the other, but in that one, point it to the existing directory where it was installed in the first OS.

Note that if you have to uninstall it from the first OS, you will have to run a repair install (or uninstall/install again) in the second if you wish to keep it around there, as the uninstall will remove everything. Likely not so if you uninstall from the second OS, because in that case, the installer should have marked everything as already existing and not in need of removal on uninstall, so the install should still work on the first OS without repairing or reinstalling.

Of course, if you don't pay for the second install, even though they share the same set of files, you may be in breach of the EULA. (If the installer calls home to verify the key, it may not even be possible to do the install on the second OS even though your intent is to have it share the same files as the first install and even though, in this case, it's not even possible to use them on both OSes at the same time.)

Update

According to the answer by fixer1234, you won't be in breach of the EULA by installing Office on two different boot partitions of the same physical machine.

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To respond to the general question in your title, you can do that with a "portable" application. Those are designed to operate without installation. If you can see it in the other OS's partition, you can run it.

Unfortunately, Office 2007 is not a portable app. Not only does it need the hooks and registry entries from installation, Microsoft sort of insists on it as part of license control.

That said, it isn't clear what problem you're trying to solve or avoid (license limitations vs. wasting hard disk space with duplicate installations vs. something else). If the reason for your question relates to the license, it isn't necessary to get fancy with a single installation.

I similarly had a question about installing Office in multiple partitions on a dual boot system; in my case, from the perspective of using up the installations authorized by the license. I checked with Microsoft about how they count those installations. If it's the same physical machine and you are using only one installation at any given time, Microsoft counts it as a single installation.

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