Windblows product key recovery, MS Office, etc.

[Noah Tellin]

Thanks for the tips on the online Word Editor and such. That might be
useful if I have more issues with Windows (a safe bet).

I never had problems opening any resume or docx file that I had
created in LibreOffice except in Word. The problem was getting a
product key from files copied from a Windows partition so I could
install MS Office on a different computer while I take my time fixing
the computer from which I had copied the files. Not that I want to use
MS Office, but I paid for it, and haven't had it running since June,
when Windows 7 went into a coma on my dual-booted ThinkPad. Recruiters
unable to open my resume is, I think you'll agree, a serious [problem
when job hunting.

Recruiters and other people could not open my resume when it had been
saved as docx from LibreOffice, and neither could I when I did get
Word running. I could see the content of the docx I had created with
LibreOffice in that software just fine. MS Word didn't like the output
(how convenient).

The tools that are frequently suggested for getting the product keys
did not work as promised. ProduKey would not grab the keys from the
connected USB drive and I could not get it to find anything even in
the files copied to the same hard drive. It only gave me keys for
installed software on the local machine. Another product gave me
incredible detail on the local machine, including a bunch of product
keys, but had no means to grab anything from another source, or way to
change that. Even a registry editor wouldn't do it. Much sleep was
lost, to no avail.

I did get a product key through my MS account and downloaded Office
over the net and got it to install, but with a bunch of
connectivity-related issues that I had to resolve the next day.

I'm going to save to the older .doc format for my cv and resume from
now on, as there has been much more time for reverse engineering that.
I prefer PDF, but many employment agencies insist on MS format for
their automated resume scanning tools. I'll have to update a Word docx
version in MS Word if I want to send anything out in that file format.

When I see an employer that explicitly accepts resumes in ODT I want
to do a happy dance. It is a too-rare occurrence.