Restoring backed up data to new laptop and upgrading Office

[csb605]

My husband's laptop was stolen last week and I have ordered/received a new
laptop with the same Operating System as the stolen one (XP Professional). I
had done a backup of his system days before the theft; howver, I have never
done a restore before.

The old laptop had MS Office 2003 installed (preinstalled by Dell) and I
understand that the license went with the machine (and I don't have the
installation CDs anyway.)

I have a retail version of Office 2002 that was originally installed on a
computer that we no longer use.

My goal is to get this new laptop up and running with either Office 2003 or
2007 and restoring the Outlook and other office files from the backup device.
Should I install the Office 2002 I have and then upgrade to 2007 -- can I
restore the 2003 files I have backed up to a newly installed Office 2007 or
must I upgrade from 2002 to 2003 and then restore the files and Outlook?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

 

[DL]

You can simply install Office 2007, you may qualify for upgrade pricing if
you have genuine MS Office2002 cd's

Your backed up OL2003 data files con be 'restored' to your laptop, how you
do this depends on your type of backup.
If the backup is simply a copy of your data files, copy them to My
Documents, then simply open in OL
Do NOT restore backed up data to the default outlook location as this will
likely overwrite any existing data files both corrupting them & your Profile