Installing MS Office on an external drive?

Is it possible to install MS Office on an external drive (such as
removable hard drive connected through a USB port)? I want to do this
so I can carry the software from one machine to another.

According to my understanding, this should be perfectly legal with
regards to the licensing agreement because all Microsoft wants is that
the software be used only at one machine at a time, which is true for
this scenario. Let me know if my understanding is incorrect.

I do not know whether or not it is technically feasible. If the
software uses files on the external and internal drives in order to
run, then could there be a compatibility issue when the drive is
connected to a machine different than the machine on which it was
originally installed? Let me know if you have used the software in
this way, and the issues, if any, that you faced.

Thanks very much for looking at this post. All answers are appreciated.

Terry
Mon Jan 21 04:39:55 PST 2008

No this is not technically feasible. Office writes load of settings to the
Windows registry and also needs to register all its dlls and applications in
the registry. If you install it on an external drive, it will work locally
(but with reduced efficiency) but will not work on another computer.

--
Terry Farrell - MS Word MVP

<tandon.sourabh@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:62a4eda2-67c1-45d9-8d0e-635bcf3e3bd9@s27g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
> Is it possible to install MS Office on an external drive (such as
> removable hard drive connected through a USB port)? I want to do this
> so I can carry the software from one machine to another.
>
> According to my understanding, this should be perfectly legal with
> regards to the licensing agreement because all Microsoft wants is that
> the software be used only at one machine at a time, which is true for
> this scenario. Let me know if my understanding is incorrect.
>
> I do not know whether or not it is technically feasible. If the
> software uses files on the external and internal drives in order to
> run, then could there be a compatibility issue when the drive is
> connected to a machine different than the machine on which it was
> originally installed? Let me know if you have used the software in
> this way, and the issues, if any, that you faced.
>
> Thanks very much for looking at this post. All answers are appreciated.

Gordon
Tue Jan 22 09:15:57 PST 2008

<tandon.sourabh@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:62a4eda2-67c1-45d9-8d0e-635bcf3e3bd9@s27g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
> Is it possible to install MS Office on an external drive (such as
> removable hard drive connected through a USB port)? I want to do this
> so I can carry the software from one machine to another.

I don't think you can AFAIK - there are many registry items add on install -
also there are other folders in C:/Program Files/ other than just the main
office ones - Common Files for a start.