The Windows Club

Microsoft Office 2010 Starter Edition – Features, Download, FAQ

Microsoft Office 2010 Starter Edition is a free but ad-supported version of Office 2010, and many may want to download it since it will satisfy the need of most home users.

Microsoft Office Starter Edition

Microsoft has introduced the Office Starter 2010, as a free but ad-supported version. But it has its limitations.

Microsoft Office 2010 Starter Edition can do the following things:

  1. Create and edit simple Word documents and Excel spreadsheets
  2. Open existing Word and Excel files
  3. Manage a simple budget
  4. Writing letters
  5. Basic text work

Microsoft Office 2010 Starter Edition cannot do the following things:

  1. Create PowerPoint presentations
  2. Sending emails and keeping track of his calendar with Outlook
  3. Organize notes with OneNote
  4. Using macros
  5. Modify toolbar
  6. Retrieving external data in Excel
  7. Insert table of contents, footnotes, and bibliography
  8. Remove advertisements.
  9. Track Changes Add comments and use Track Changes
  10. Analyzing data with pivot tables
  11. Create professional documents with SmartArt graphics.

Office Starter 2010 is designed for home users who are not ready to buy a full version of Office 2010.

You cannot download and install Office Starter. Microsoft probably did not want PC users to move to some freeware options, and therefore decided to use a Starter Edition of Office which includes Word & Excel, to retain the home user who in case mostly uses these two only.

Starter Edition can only come pre-loaded on an OEM computer and OEM manufacturers have two options:

  • Install Microsoft PC Essentials @ $ 2 per license. This includes  Office Starter 2010.
  • If OEM’s choose to install ONLY Office Starter 2010, then it costs them $5 per Office Starter 2010 license.

So you see, you cannot download Microsoft Office 2010 Starter Edition. You can only get it pre-loaded if you buy an OEM computer.

Read next: How to run Office Starter on Windows PC.

TIP: Download this tool to quickly find & fix Windows errors automatically
AnandK@TWC

AnandK@TWC

Anand Khanse is the Admin of TheWindowsClub.com, a 10-year Microsoft MVP Awardee in Windows (2006-16) & a Windows Insider MVP since then. Please read the entire post & the comments first, create a System Restore Point before making any changes to your system & be careful about any 3rd-party offers while installing freeware.

26 Comments

  1. wow what a joke office starter turned out to be, use it a few times and it starts asking for a product key,then stops loading up altogether! plus try getting some help from microsoft for it,not possible!!!! hope the advertisers dont pay much to not have their ads seen!

  3. http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/downloads/Pages/office_2010_opk.aspx

    Office Starter (Word and Excel) is contained for complete offline installation in the OPK for Office 2010. After Installation it is genuine and activated. You must not install normal Office because these are trials which will need keys. Office Starter has no key and does not need one. And the download does *not* cost money..

    Limitations : docx/xlsx files have no preview thumbs in Vista/7 and preview pane in explorer will not show content. Thats not because Starter is “crippled”, its because of this :
    Office Starter is a virtualized product. It installs into a (non existant ) “Drive Q” which nobody can access. There is no word.exe or excel.exe, only “Officevirt.exe” and “Client Virtualization Handler”,CVH.exe.

    The technic behind this is called “App-V”. Server-sided streaming of apps to thin clients. Now for Office2010 Microsoft puts the “server” into “Drive Q” and uses the CVH.exe to stream Office 2010 onto your desktop..

    This only works with Vista SP1 above ( 32 and 64 ). OEMs are being told that its impossible on XP.

    Total weired and overcomplicated. The Enduser however will never notice that. He will only wonder why he has a “Q” drive and why the Icons for Excel and Word point in fact to “CVH.exe” .

    Installation of Office2010 Starter takes less then 2 Minutes with the OPK plus a reboot. You must use the offline installer inside the “Starter” folder. ( thats the one without “OL” in its name ).

    If you click under help you see “product activated” ( without ever having contact to MS servers ). You can even create “Office to go” USB sticks afterwards, which contains the exact copy of your “Q” drive.. once inserted into your friends pc it will install “Click 2 Run”, which is again the ominous CVH.exe Handler that streams apps..

    The ads in the apps can be lived with. Nothing serious-only MS office inhouse branded ads to get you to buy the full package, no popups or disturbings. Its a small area of the screen only with the ads. On 16:9 screens no problem.

    Word 2010 Starter has all the nifty effects like picture-editing, new word art with glow effects etc plus what you would expect : more then Wordpad. Excel seems to have openoffice like capabilities, not too confusing.

    Overall the both are far more developped as Works has ever been. Only a database program is missing.

    Find a login name for oem.microsoft.com at bugmenot and load the OPK thing .. that easy.

    More time consuming : find the online installer for your language at mdl etc. ( roughly few megabytes ) It will download the rest on its own from MS, but takes ages to load and install ( cause it loads only feature by feature, for instance you click in word on “clipart” .. then it will download the “feature” ) . The Offline OPK is the perfect thing to have all in one installed within minutes. Add the powerpoint viewer and you have a basic fools proof office suite at the only cost of having a “Q” drive and see some non disturbing ads to your right side of the screen ( vistas sidebar is more disturbing then that ) ..

  4. the offline installers have the names “SetupConsumerC2R…OL..” ( countrycode etc is individual ) . OL means : they load the content from Online. In the OPK there is also a copy without OL in its name plus the other one.

  5. i uninstalled ms officee starter from my laptop and installed office 2007.now i a cant open the documents i worked on in the starter pack.pliz help

  6. I’m not trying to get banned, but I hear that if you Google SetupConsumerC2ROLW.exe …

  9. Mines never asked for a product key I used it for a year? Now I can’t find the site to download it again…bummer

  10. Don’t waste your time. This website is a lie. It is one of the many websites that say it’s a free genuine microsoft software download, but if you’ll just click on the tab, you see that they are only offering Open Office, which is completely different, and completely sucks. Take my advice, don’t waste your computer’s hard drive on this.

  12. Rock_n Rollexpert you have to have the gayest name in the history of names. Stupid people these days. What are we gunna do with them? Oh yeah I know make them in to politicians.

  17. I can not open a word or excel document from an email. It says I do not have enough memery but it is a brand new laptop with tons of memory. I can open PDF documents. Any thoughts?

  18. been using office starter for a year on netbook. niece uninstalled it and I recovered, now it won’t open. says there’s a licensing issue.

  19. Check whether services Office Source engine , office software protection platform running , start thse then i am not getting the licence problem…

    Amar

  25. what to do if ….”there was a problem setting up microsoft office starter 2010″ keep pop up every time i’m trying to install or running installer…pls. help

  26. As I have mentioned in the post, you cannot download Microsoft Office 2010 Starter Edition officially. You can only get it pre-loaded if you buy an OEM computer.

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