General information about the licensing and the use of Office 2003 Web Components (828949)

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This article discusses the licensing and the use of Microsoft Office 2003 Web Components.

If you create a Web page that contains an Office 2003 Web Component, visitors of the Web page cannot see the Office 2003 Web Component unless they have Office 2003 Web Components installed. If the following conditions are true, the visitor is licensed to fully interact with the Office 2003 Web Component:

• The visitor has a valid license for Microsoft Office 2003.
• The visitor has Office 2003 Web Component installed on their computer.

If the visitor does not have a valid license for Microsoft Office 2003 but installs the Office 2003 Web Components, the visitor is only licensed for static, non interactive use of the Office 2003 Web Components only.

Licensing

The Office 2003 Web Components have the following licensing requirements:

• You do not have to have a license for Office 2003 to use the Microsoft Excel object, the PivotTable object, or the Charting object if the Office 2003 Web Components are in the following modes:
  • Static
  • Non-interactive
  • Client-side
  • View-only mode
  You must have a license for Office 2003 to use the Microsoft Office Datasource Component. You cannot use the Office Datasource Component in static, non-interactive, client-side, view-only mode.
• You must have a valid license for Office 2003 or for a later version of Microsoft Office that includes the Office 2003 Web Components to use the Office 2003 Web Components interactively. You must have this valid license for each access device that accesses or uses Office 2003 Web Components on the client-side or on a remote server.
  
  An example of a device that accesses or uses Office 2003 Web Components is a personal computer. Any device that accesses or uses Office 2003 Web Components on a remote server must be licensed to run interactively.

Design-time Interactive mode and Run-time Interactive mode

Interactive access and use of Office 2003 Web Components lets the user input data into the user interface of the components. Additionally, it lets the user use the tools to design the components. The interactive licensing requirements are specified in the previous section. In Design-time and Run-time Interactive mode, you can do the following:

• Use the settings that are in the Commands and Options dialog box.
• Change the data or the structure of the components.
• Use a script to respond to user events.

Run-time Static mode

Typically, non-interactive access and use means that the user does not enter data into the component or change data in the component. Non-interactive access and use is frequently sufficient. The following list contains examples of non-interactive access and use:

• Accessing the About dialog box and the Help dialog box from the toolbar
• View the data
• Print the data
• Select and scroll through the data
• Use hyperlinks in the data
• Resize the component
• Use sheet selection
• Use the expand and collapse functionality when it is available
• Refreshing data

The following list includes some examples which do not represent as non-interactive access and use:

• Accessing the Commands and Options dialog box.
• Changing the data or the structure of the components. For example, typing inside any one of the cells when you view an Office Spreadsheet component is not considered to be an non-interactive access and use.
• Using any buttons on the component toolbar other than the About button or the Help button.

License checking

A valid Office license is required to run Office 2003 Web Components in fully-interactive mode. Both Microsoft Office 2003 Web Components version 10 (released with Microsoft Office XP and was included with Office 2003) and Microsoft Office 2003 Web Components version 11 (released with Office 2003) had a license-checking code that checked for the installation of Office.

If Office was not present on the computer, Office 2003 Web Components would run in a reduced functionality mode or a static mode. This license-checking mechanism posed challenges for programs that tried to integrate with Office 2003 Web Components. Additionally, many customers own an Office license for all computers but do not install Office on every computer. This fact caused differences in the Office 2003 Web Components run-time behavior because some computers would run in fully-interactive mode and others would run in static mode

With the release of Office 2003, the license-checking code in Office 2003 Web Components version 10 was removed to address these issues. Customers who installed Office 2003 or who downloaded an updated version of Office 2003 Web Components version 10 after the release of Office 2003 will no longer have the license-checking code in that was available in Office 2003 Web Components version 10.

With the release of Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 2, the license-checking code was also removed for Office 2003 Web Components version 11. Users who installed Office 2003 SP2 or who downloaded an updated version of Office 2003 Web Components version 11 after the release of Office 2003 SP2 will no longer have the license-checking code in Office 2003 Web Components version 11.

Users who run Office 2003 Web Components in static mode before the license-checking was removed will now see the interactive controls. However, the End User License Agreement for all versions of Office 2003 Web Components remains the same even though the license-checking code was removed and additional controls may be active. To fully understand the Office 2003 Web Components licensing requirements, see the " Licensing" section.

Availability

The Office 2003 Web Components are available in the following products:

• • All Microsoft Office 2003 editions
  • Microsoft Office Access 2003
  • Microsoft Office Excel 2003
  • Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003

By default, if you install one of these products, the Office 2003 Web Components are automatically installed on the computer.

Additionally, you can install the Office 2003 Web Components that are running the Owc11.msi file in the root folder of any Office 2003 installation source (CD-ROM or administrative installation).

Office 2003 Web Components are also available from the following Microsoft Download Center Web site: If you download and install the Office 2003 Web Components from the Microsoft Download Center and if you do not have a valid Office 2003 license, you are not licensed for interactive use of the components. This means that you cannot perform any design-time work by using the controls. Additionally, when you locate a Web page that contains an Office 2003 Web Component, you can only view the data.

You can use one of the following methods to install Office 2003 Web Components:

• From a Microsoft Web site
• From the Microsoft Office CD
• From other relevant Microsoft Office media that are distributed by Microsoft
• From an intranet installation point in a corporation or other legal entity.
  
  Note The corporation or legal entity must be in compliance with the licensing requirements that are mentioned in the "Licensing" section.

Distribution of Office 2003 Web Components other than as provided in this paragraph is strictly forbidden.

For more information about how to install and deploy the Office 2003 Web Components, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: