I have a copy of Office 2007 Professional and I want to run it on my laptop and my PC. My friend says its ok, but when I called Microsoft, they said "One copy, one PC". I like my friend's answer better. Which is it?

Anna asks a very common question, and the answer depends on your specific license of Office 2007. Our understanding is that some copies of Office are licensed for a desktop PC and a portable (notebook/laptop) PC, other variants of Office are not.

There is a way to find out if you're one of the lucky ones. It's a little convoluted, but doable.

First, open Word 2007 (you need to do this in Word, not Outlook). Under the Office Sphere in the upper, left corner, click the Word Options rectangular button.

Next, click Resources on the left side of the Word Options dialog, and then the About button on the bottom, right.

On the About Microsoft Office Word dialog box that pops up, look for the View Microsoft Office License Terms link, as shown in Figure A.

FIGURE A

Click this link.

Click the link. You'll then see a long license document that contains the terms and conditions you agreed to when installing Office. I'll bet you didn't know you promised to make everyone at Microsoft pancakes whenever they ask! OK, I'm kidding (I hope).

Anyway, scroll down. You're looking for the Licensed Device section, as shown in Figure B.

FIGURE B

If your license says this, you're golden.

If your license says something similar to what Figure B says, then you can use Office on your desktop and your portable device. If it doesn't, well, go make some pancakes. It won't extend your license, but they'll make you feel better.

Joe is a ZATZ associate editor. Prior to this job, he was customer support manager for the FileFlex database engine.