How To Copy Microsoft Office CD Contents To USB Flash Drive

If you use or have used a Netbook, then you would know that the devices do not have CD drives. This is mainly due to the size, but many consumers have managed to get along just fine without using optical storage media on their computers. One of the hurdles faced though is the widespread release of proprietary software, and even operating systems, on optical disks. This is when the flash drives are of no use to us unless they can hold the same information on them. 

Transferring the executable installation files of software to your PC using a flash drive is a lot easier than actually installing the whole operating system the same way. Actually, the latter can’t be done the same way unless you make the flash drive bootable, and there’s a whole series of additional steps to take if you’re doing that, and they’ll probably have you calling the Microsoft Office Help line within an hour of trying them out!

Instructions to copy Microsoft Office CD contents to USB Flash Drive 

• Insert the Microsoft Office CD into the optical drive of the computer that has one. 
• Insert a USB flash drive into one of the USB slots of this computer. 
• Navigate to the My Computer folder, and right click the CD drive. Select the Explore option and a screen will pop up, showing the contents of the CD. 
• Slide along the menu bar on top of the window and find the Tools menu. Click on it and then select the Folder Options sub menu from the list of entries. In the dialog box that appears, go to the View tab and check the box next to the Show Hidden Files and Folders option. After this, hit the Apply button, and then hit OK. In effect, this shows you any files or folders on the drive, which are set as hidden. 
• Select the whole of the contents of the disk using the CTRL+A key combination, and right click to bring up the context menu. From this menu, select the Copy option. 
• Open the USB drive from My Computer and right click on an empty space in the main area. Select the Paste option to transfer the contents that you previously copied. 

The above mentioned steps will help you copy the contents of a Microsoft Office disk to a flash drive easily. If you need further assistance, you can call the Microsoft Office Help line.