Thank you spuds, northumbria61, lotvic, Woolwell, and john bunyan, for all your help and advice.

To give a little more information:

The laptop has a malfunctioning key which is becoming worse, and there are times when the screen picture just disappears for seemingly no reason, both of which are extremely annoying as you have to restart what you were doing.

The laptop, a customer return, was purchased from a store which does not specialise in computers, but does offer a 12 month guarantee. It is unlikely they will be able to replace the laptop as they do not carry them all the time, and they do not tend to want to get involved with repairs, preferring instead just to offer refunds.

I purchased Office Pro because although the laptop had the Starter Office installed, our grandchildren stay with us 2 days a week and their schoolwork/homework requires them to use Publisher and Powerpoint, which are not included in the Starter programme.

The faulty laptop is operational, so I could probably do a hardrive wipe, but I have recently seen a TV programme which stated that information may still be accessible by those intent on web type crimes, which is a bit of a worry given that I don’t know what will happen when I return it.

Also, would a factory fresh restore reinstall Office Starter and other programmes which are available on new computers?

I do have a couple of external hard drives which I use to backup reasonably regularly, but I’ve never thought of using them to save to instead of the laptop, so thank you for this tip.

The Office software was bought from a Student Provider at a reduced rate.

It does have discs and a product key - is this the licence?

Lotvic, can you explain how I can access the Activate by phone option?

I do have something called "SafeIT" which is supposed to shred digital documents and digital media, but I don’t know how good it is, so I will look out for CCleaner.

Thanks again.

Thank you again lotvic

The laptop is an Acer Aspire 5552

Brilliant lotvic, thank you again.

Unfortunately a further problem has developed which I was not expecting.

I received an email from the supplier of the MS Office software who say I cannot transfer it to a new laptop, even though the existing laptop is faulty and has to be returned. Its just a pity they do not make this very clear to would be customers before they sell it.

But,thanks to the help received here, at least I can confidently clear the information from the laptop before I return it.