Everyone tells me that the word-processing program my Toshiba laptop came with (Microsoft Works) sucks, so I finally got myself an Office 2000 CD. It’s supposed to be “easy to install,” but I’ve heard that gag before—can anyone tell me what to expect after I put the CD in, and what buttons I press after that?
Thanks!
—Luddite Lil
The past several versions of Office installer I’ve seen give Standard, Custom, and Minimal install options. If all you want is Word, you will almost certainly have to go with the “Custom” option and be willing to put up with a butt-load of “You have to install this other thing for the program you are asking for to work”-type error messages.
Hope this helps.
Though this was a question about piracy! For future reference, I think you simply meant “install.” Also FWIW “download” usually implies receiving something from your perspective, and “upload” usually implies sending something from your persepctive. But if you use industrial software and/or machinery, sometimes this is backwards because the machinery’s perspective is more important than your own. 
Have you actually tried the version of Microsoft Works that you have? The later versions of it include Microsoft Word. (The earlier versions had a word-processor that was very Word-like but with much more limited functionality.)
This is all too confusing.
Yes, I did try and take a peek at Microsoft Works, and couldn’t make head or tail of it (it doesn’t come with any instructions—they want you to buy that!).
KneadToKnow, I am now thoroughly baffled. Are you saying I should or shouldn’t install the Custom option?
I’m sorry, Eve, I didn’t mean to make matters worse.
Please keep in mind that I have not myself installed the version of Office you will be installing. However, every version of Office I have installed since version 4 (circa 1994) has started with a 3-way option. You could run[ol][li]the standard installation, which requires the least input from you but which results in a relatively hefty chunk of your hard drive space being given over to the program,[]a custom installation, which requires the greatest amount of input from you but which gives you the option to (to a degree, anyway) completely avoid installing the parts of the program you don’t want (like Excel, PowerPoint, Access, etc.), or []the minimal installation, designed for laptops, which is like the standard installation “lite,” in other words, it requires fairly little interaction but doesn’t install everything the standard does.[/ol][/li]
Your needs will dictate what you need to install, but if I were in your shoes and only wanted Word, I would run the custom installation. My caveat here (and above) is that you won’t have any luck if you just go into the custom installation and uncheck everything but Word. The installer program will come back and tell you (probably more than once) that you have unchecked something that you must have in order to use Word. So this will be a hassle.
On the other hand, it’s just a hassle, it’s not actually hard. Whenever it tells you you have to have something you’ve unchecked, just tell it to install that. It’s not like you actually need to know why you need it.
Oh, and at the risk of further confusing the issue, sometimes you have a fourth option: to run the program from the CD.
Do no use this option.
Selecting this option is the only guaranteed way to lose your CD. Microsoft has software distribution reclamation fairies (known as SoDiReFas in the industry) whose only job in life is to steal the CD-ROMs of people who choose this option, thereby requiring them to purchase the software again.
I’m installed Office 2000 as I write this.
What you see when Office starts running is a window that asks for your name, business, and CD key. Type in the CD key and click next.
Next is the End User License Agreement. Agree to it.
Now you have the options to install. Since you don’t seem to be a power user type, your best bet is “Typical.” Yes, it takes up hard drive space, but most likely you have plenty. It also gives you all the options, just in case you discover it’d be convenient to use Access or Excel. Click on the icon.
That should be everything. Just let it run.
When you first start Word, it’ll give a “gathering information” screen. Sometimes it requires the Office CD, but this won’t be necessary after the first time.
Thanks! I will print this out and try it tonight.
As usual, the voice of “doing it right now” gives better advice than the voice of “did it 100 times several years ago.”
Good work, Chuck!
Good god.
To install Microsoft Office apps on a Mac, you
•_insert CD
•_drag icon of program(s) (Word, Excel, whatever) to anywhere you want on any hard drive or partition on your computer.
*
Period.
(I still don’t like Word but I must express sincere admiration for the engineering of MacBU products from Microsoft. They are well-crafted.)
I couldn’t agree with you more. 
I have the Office CD, and all I needed on my laptop was Word, Outlook, and Excel, so that’s what I installed.
On the CD is a program called SETUPWRD.EXE. This program does give you a choice of full, custom, etc. installations. I suspect most people could choose “typical” and never know the difference.
OK, well, it didn’t work . . .
I put the CD in; it asked for my name, initials, business, CD key, and I typed them all in and hit “enter.”
Then it said, “[Product Compliance Code: Setup failed to locate qualifying product on your machine. Please select the drive where a qualifying product can be found.” It gave the choices of a:, c: and cd:, so I tried c:.
Then I got Error 1608: Could not find any previous installed compliant products on the machine for installing this product, and it wouldn’t even let me go back to try cd:, just kept giving me error codes.
Now, I have a brand-new Toshiba laptop with Microsoft Windows XP; it can’t be possible that it “won’t accept” an Office 2000 program!
Help!
Almost sounds as if the Office 2000 CD you have is the upgrade version, and not the full install version. That’s just a guess though, if anybody has anything more solid, go with that.
I think Latch is right. It sounds as if the installer is looking for an earlier version of MS Office to replace, rather than unstall one from scratch.
Normally the disk label would say so. What does the MS disk label say?
It says “Microsoft Office 2000 Standard.”
A friend tells me that it might be because my computer came with Microsoft Works, and you can’t install Office 2000 until you delete Works? “It’s like trying to install Olivia de Havilland when you already have Joan Fontaine,” he says.
Is that a possibility?
Oh, crap, it does say "upgrade"on the disc itself! Am I screwed? What is it I need to get?
OK, let me get this straight: the Windows installation allows users to select from standard, custom or minimal installations, depending on their individual needs. The Mac install limits you to whatever configuration Steve Jobs thinks is best for you. And the Mac installation is better, because…
Essentially, yes. You need to get a full version, not the upgrade version. I don’t know who might be willing to make an exchange, though.