Error activating office 2003

I know what you are thinking after reading the title, but it is what I have to deal with, no other option.

Right.  Today, I’m having problems when trying to activate an office license.  When I tried to do this over the phone, it tells me that activation error at the end, and I will need to speak to one of the customer service operator.  That’s fine, this is not the first time anyway, so I waited for 10 mins… and someone from India pick up the phone.  I explained to him what I want to do, and given him the installation ID, so that he can try at his end.  unfortunately he gets the same problem, and this is where the problem starts.

He starts telling me this is a 10 years old product, it is out of warranty, he cannot help me unless I’m willing to pay $80 for technical support call.  Come on, if I’m willing to $80, I might as well going to get a new copy of office, and he did suggested that.  I tell him that I don’t want a new copy of office and I just need Microsoft to activate my software, I don’t want technical support.  This gentleman starts losing his temper, he starts putting me on hold or not speaking anything (I can hear background talking tho!).

Cut the long story short, deleting a file as shown below

  1. Click Start, click Run, type C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersApplication DataMicrosoftOfficeData, and then click OK.
  2. Right-click the Opa11.dat file, and then click Delete.

    Important Do not delete the opa11.bak file.

  3. Close the folder.
  4. Start an Office 2003 program to start the Office 2003 Activation Wizard.

This works for me, simply as this… doesn’t cost $80, doesn’t need to listen to their rubbish.