Neat Office 2007 Hack

Once you have installed Microsoft Office with no product key(which in case you reading this you probably havent), proceed as follows:

1. Go to  C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\OFFICE12\Office Setup Controller\Proof.en
2. Right click on Proof.XML file(should be the only file), select open with or edit (always use the king of editors i.e Notepad unless you have unearthed another one)
3. In some OS installations you cannot see notepad, either way, I wont get lost trying to explain this to you, just get around it some how, drag and drop ALWAYS works fine.
4. Scroll to the very bottom of the file and locate the following lines, they should ideally be the last lines

<feature Id=”SetupXmlFiles”>

1. Change the AlwaysInstalled to neverInstalled, it should resemble the following:

<optionref Id=”neverInstalled”/>

1. And ofcourse the last step, save the damn file as Proof.xml, remember not to save it as text, additionally when the save dialogue comes up, just double click on the original Proof.xml and when asked to replace it just say yeah (keep a backup of the original in case you fuck up)
2. Launch MS OFFICE 2007 with pride.

Word of warning, I have not personally tried this trick on my lovely machine because I buy genuine software, which you should do as well , but I can assure you it works as well. Problems to encounter are definitely access rights, remember to give yourself full ownership otherwise the file wont be saved.

Cheerios, happy hacking