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How do I back up iWork, iLife and Microsoft Office?
Tuesday, June 22, 2010 / Applications, Backups, Microsoft Office, iLife
How do I back up iWork, iLife and Microsoft Office?
I have a computer with iWork, iLife, and Office 2004 (all old versions on Tiger). I will soon either reformat my hard drive or get a new one. How do I make sure that I have all the license files, since it’s been a while and I don’t have license keys any more.
Thanks!
- Stephen
The iLife applications do not have a registration or activation key. Microsoft Office applications store a copy of the activation key in the supporting files so you can get both of those file groups by copying the Office folder and the iLife applications from the Applications Folder. You will also need to Copy iWork applications but you need one aditional file for that to work. Copy this file to your backup media (Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iWork06.plist ) and then move it back to your drive after the reinstall.
The best way to get this done would be to buy a new hard drive and then use Apple’s Migration Assistant to grab all you applications and files from the old hard drive. Migration Assistant is part of OS X 10.4 or higher.
Hope this helps
- Jacob






