Flashes of Panic

• I have an older version of MS Office on my Mac, dating from my PowerBook.

• My new MacBook came with a “trial run” (i.e. 30-day license) of the newest version of Office. That trial version has now expired.

• I don’t run my primary account as an administrator. When I install software, it prompts for an administrator’s login and password, and I give those for a separate admin account.

• Whenever I try to open an Excel file, the Mac tries to open the trial version first. It then gives an error (the trial version has expired, etc. etc.) and I need to deliberately use “open with…” to select the older version.

• When I try to uninstall the trial run, it won’t let me, because I’m not an administrator.

To remove the software, I will need to quit all running programs, log out, and log back in again as the administrator. Then I’ll uninstall the software, log out again, and finally log back in as myself.

In other words, having failed to win me over as an upgrade customer, Microsoft insists on being a persistent inconvenience. This “trial run” has done nothing to convince me that MS Office is worth the price of an upgrade, and in fact has been antagonistic—I’d go a long way to avoid giving money to the company which installed this canker on my system.

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