David,

Thanks. I guess I'm hoping that whatever Microsoft wants to charge me $35
for is a piece of information (a key code, a patch to download or some other
way to type in something that will make the two programs recognize each
other) rather than a CD or something else they'd have to send me.

Regarding Open Office, all I wanted to do was find a program that would open
files I had saved in Microsoft Office. I don't need a database or a lot of
bells and whistles. Microsoft Works has worked fine for me, except when I
want to open an older file, or a Word document file sent to me by someone
else.

I'm not exactly a "power user" when it comes to Office, which is one reason
I'm hesitant to pay to find out if there's a fix.

"David R. Norton MVP" wrote:

Joanne wrote in:

I would like to post a new question looking for users who know how to do
what I need to do.

I don't think that's possible as several others have pointed out but why not
give it a try? Just ignore any response that doesn't answer the question.

I'll just go back to using Open Office and not give Microsoft Office a
backward glance.

That's a viable alternative. OO has had some problems in retaining
formatting when opening *some* MS Office documents but I've been told that's
getting better in later releases which I've not tried. As you should have
learned from reading between the lines of various responses in this thread,
MS Office does require upgrading every few years as support is phased out for
earlier versions, so does OO but the upgrades are free.

If you have no problems with the few small limitations of OO and the one big
limitation (no database) then you should stay with it.


--
David R. Norton MVP