To change the product / serial key in office 2007 is easy

open regedit

(Start -> Run -> “regedit” (no quotes) -> OK)

Browse to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftOffice12.0Registration{a very long number}

in there you will find two keys

DigitalProductID
ProductID

Make sure all your office applications are closed and rename these keys, eg

old.DigitalProductID
old.ProductID


Start office and you will be prompted to re-enter your key. press OK and it will ask you to ‘Install Now’ its quick and painless and your done.

if it all borks up, delete the re-created keys and rename your old. keys back to their original names.

C:Documents and Settings%username%Local SettingsTemporary Internet FilesOLKXX …..SORTOF

as well as this folder being hidden on several levels Microsoft randomize the folder name as an extra step of security to hide these files from users and other security reasons. The last bunch of characters could be anything. (some examples OLK6, OLK8F, OLK3SM etc) You can find this exact folder out by opening up regedit and going to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOfficeXX.0OutlookSecurity XX = 9 for Office 2000, 11 for Office 2003

etc also of course replace %username% with the username. That registry location has always been a hassle to find for me, thats why I am writing this article, throwing in enough keywords to hopefull y bring this article up for other people with the problem of having to get into this folder. Why, exactly WOULD you want to get into this folder? well, one limitation in O2K and O2K3 is the ability to rename duplicate filenames in this folder. lets say you have a scanner or another user sending you the same attachment continuously, it might be ‘image1.pdf’ after a while, you wont be able to open this attachment anymore because outlook adds a number to the filename from 1 to 99, but past 99 it cant handle and you need to get into this folder to delete (or move) the image1(1).pdf image1(2).pdf image1(3).pdf image1(4).pdf ~ image1(99).pdf why else? perhaps you (or your user) has inadvertently been working on a document opened out of email, closed it and saved it but don’t know where it is anymore, because it’s saved it in this hidden folder. Can you change this? no, not as far as I can see. I changed it and it didnt save attachments where I told it to, seems to be there informational purposes only. Another note, if you are doing this remotely (which you can easily do) Remote registry access the users computer, hopefully only one user has been using it and you can find this folder under the first S_1_18_1_20_NUMBERSTOAFRICA folder, there is two per user, it’s the first one you want. if you want to make sure you have the right folder, you can look in

HKEY_USERSS-1-5-21-18030245246-1264929856-123457687-7181Software MicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerShell Folders

it will have the username several times.

MS KB 296115