Have been using Excel on my laptop successfully for a few months and suddenly when I open spreadsheet it will not let me doing anything to it! I have ignored the product key and knew it would eventually not let me use it anymore. Wher can I get a valid 25 digit product key from?

Buy a license from Softwaregeeks.co.uk

I buy all sorts of out of date licenses from them for backwards compatibility testing…

Need anything advanced? Just open it in google docs if not

Sign up for O365. £7.99 a month or £79.00 per annum and you’ll get the very latest version.

£22.80 on Amazon

If you don’t need Excel specifically, you could try LibreOffice or OpenOffice – both free and very good – can open/edit Excel stuff without issue.

Sign up for O365. £7.99 a month or £79.00 per annum and you’ll get the very latest version.

Sod O365. Subscription models for your average home user are just not worth it. Nearly £500 over 5 years… you’re ok thanks.

+1 for buy a licence key – I’ve not used Softwaregeeks, but eBay is a rich source – plenty of 2007 ones on there for £1 or £1.50, or get 2016 for £10.

If you don’t need Excel specifically, you could try LibreOffice or OpenOffice – both free and very good – can open/edit Excel stuff without issue.

As a competent Excel user I found both immensely frustrating (although not as bad as Google Docs), all the keyboard shortcuts are different, nothing is quite where you want it to be. It’s 95% of Excel, but the 5% is utterly infuriating.

How have you been using Office 2007 – software that’s a decade old – for “a few months”?

Presumably you’ve got an old CD, so the licence key should be in the box?

As a competent Excel user I found both immensely frustrating (although not as bad as Google Docs), all the keyboard shortcuts are different, nothing is quite where you want it to be. It’s 95% of Excel, but the 5% is utterly infuriating.

For 95% of what the home user does in excel google docs does without any kind of shortcuts or fancy stuff. I’d suggest people try it before dismissing them completely. Spending most of my days in excel at this point and have no issues with Google at home for budgets, planning etc.

It’s an old Acer laptop, (it’s very small and light and doesn’t have a CD Rom drive) that I got from a friend and they had never used Office so it has only been used by myself. I only use it for doing my finances on a simple spreadsheet. I don’t access the internet with it so just need to enter a product key and I will be happy with that.

As njee says, just go on eBay, I’ve had some OEM codes off there in the past, pretty reliable. Occassionally the sellers disappear before you can leave feedback.. mysterious

For 95% of what the home user does in excel google docs does without any kind of shortcuts or fancy stuff. I’d suggest people try it before dismissing them completely. Spending most of my days in excel at this point and have no issues with Google at home for budgets, planning etc.

Of course, functionally it’s spot on. The vast majority of people use perhaps 1% of the functionality of Excel. I just found it hugely frustrating, not inadequate. Formulae being composed differently, things working slightly differently, that sort of thing. YMMV.

I do have a couple of Google Sheets I keep because I can edit them on multiple devices very easily, but I’ll pay for an Excel licence key for most stuff, always!

they had never used Office so it has only been used by myself

In which case it’s presumably a trial version.  You don’t have a licence key because no-one has ever bought it.