Special Edition Using Microsoft® Office XP

Activating Your Copy of Office

After you complete the Setup process from a retail or OEM version of Office XP, Office is available for immediate use. However, you may be required to complete one final step before you can continue using Office past an initial trial period. For these copies, you must activate the product by contacting Microsoft over the Internet or by phone. This measure is intended to stop piracy by refusing to activate a copy of Office XP that has already been installed on another computer already.

For most users with an Internet connection, product activation happens automatically and takes only a few seconds. The activation process generates a "fingerprint" based on the hardware in your system and then associates that ID code ...