There's odd. Office 2010 came preloaded on laptop 18 months ago, but now it demands I buy 2010 before it will open them..

[weregonnaneedasmallerPan]

telling me that 2010 isn't installed. About two weeks ago all the doc icons turned a fetching orange/yellow, which is nice. But when I try to actually open the docs the computer says no.
Is this a common problem? Is there a get-round solution please?
tia

I believe most laptops come with "trial versions" of MS Office. You get to use it for as long as the free trial lasts and then it asks you to pay to continue using it.

Uninstall it and replace it with LibreOffice.

I'm having the same problem today......except I bought and paid for office 2010 when I bought my laptop. All the icons are orange/ yellow and won't open, giving me a message saying there are missing or corrupted files. However, I can open all the documents fine if I open word or excel first as a blank new document and then select the file I want from the open menu.

Any ideas, or is my laptop buggered?

I haven't used MS Office in a decade (been using OpenOffice because I'm too cheap to pay for a license for something that has a good free alternative) but I've been seeing people post about this all over MN this morning, so it appears a Windows Update has buggered something recently. A bit of Googling produces this. Make sure you read it carefully and apply the fix for your version of Office, because there is one for the Starter version and another for other versions.

Naoko - that article was essential! It talked of how to open docs by opening Word then opening the docs. This works. One of our IT folks suggested this as well.

Can I ask a second question? Can I cut n' paste from Word to LibreOffice? I have work-related docs in "Office 2010 Starter" and want to shift them over to LO as 2010 is now looking a bit unreliable and vulnerable to other MS activities. Anyone know?

Thank you Naoko.....going for a read now. Yes, I can open word or excel and then open my files as the poster below you just said. Am running a virus scan just now, just to be sure, but off to peruse this article now.

You can cut and paste from Word to LO, but you don't need to. They're compatible. You should just be able to open the documents that you already have in LibreOffice instead.

It worked! Had to do a bit of digging about as the lack of conventional c: drive and file structure confused us a little when trying to reassociate the files with office. When I managed to discover it uses a virtual q: drive then it was a piece of cake to sort.

Check me, explaining all this like I know what I'm talking about!

Eddie I read your last post as follows:

"It worked! Had to do a bit of digging about as the lack of ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ piece of cake~~~~.

Mmmm. Cake.

weregonnaneedasmallerPan, ha ha!! I felt a bit like that too!!! In a nutshell food theme here I followed the link that Naoko posted and tried the fix there but it didn't work.

However, we had the principle now of telling Office which files it owned so set off to find Word, Excell etc on the hard drive. Which led to problems as we couldn't find the programmes at all!! The link posted though has a teeny tiny wee link at the bottom which took us to a page that explained word, excel etc don't actually live on the C drive (hard drive) as you might expect. For some unknown reason, Office 2010 uses a virtual Q drive......which meant it was easy to find under "my computer" and link it all back by right clicking the files and telling them to open with Q drive virtual office rather than C drive word etc as you might expect.

That didn't make it any easier, did it . Lets just all eat cake and rejoice in the fact that my laptop has not gone to the great pc graveyard in the sky.

I've just seen this thread and i'm so happy, i thought it was my laptop that was playing up (also 18 months old with the Starter pack pre-loaded). Not sure how the solution is going to help emails that have office attachments though, i would like to think that Microsift could release an update that actually fixes the problem automatically.

Although for general safety, one should use Windows update from time to time, I normally keep it disabled (OK, needs me to remember to do updates) and generally avoid some of these problems.

In years gone by, with a few odd graphics cards, etc, etc, almost any Windows update could clobber something needed by a particular bit of software (whether it was a game or CAD or whatever, didn't matter if it wa a serious app or something for fun, anything needing graphics or ding numeric calculations would be affected).

From time to time I have suggested clients only do updates when they have a good backup of all their data and software, and perhaps a month or two after lots of "bug fix" updates have come out. Also to use the system restore/backup facility to be able to "roll back" from an update and hopefully "undo" any changes which were detrimental.