Description of numbering scheme for product code GUIDs in Office 2003

This article describes the numbering scheme that is used by Microsoft Office 2003 programs and utilities.

When you install Office 2003 or any one of the stand-alone Office 2003 programs, a product code (or GUID) is created in the following section of the Microsoft Windows registry:The format that each GUID uses is:The first eight digits of the GUID contain information about the release type, the edition type, the store-keeping unit (SKU), and the language of the product.

The remaining digits in the GUID (6000-11D3-8CFE-0150048383C9) do not provide any information that can be easily categorized.

The following table describes each of the first eight characters of the GUID. You can view the GUIDs for programs that are installed on your computer. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. Locate the following subkey:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

The GUIDs should be the first items that are listed under Uninstall, because their names start with braces.

Each GUIDs data pane contains multiple values, including the product name that appears in the Add/Remove Programs dialog box (DisplayName), the date that the product was installed (InstallDate), the product ID (Product ID), the installation source (InstallSource), and the registered company and user name (RegCompany, RegOwner).

Release type

The release type values specify the level of the release, such as Beta versus release to manufacturing. See the following table for details.

Edition type

The edition type specifies the audience for the Office 2003 product, such as Enterprise or Retail. See the following table for details.

Office SKU

The Office SKU is the version of your Office 2003 product, such as Professional or Standard. See the following table for details.

Language identifier

The language identifier, or LCID, varies from language to language. Because the LCID is stored in the GUID in hexadecimal format, you may have to convert it to decimal to determine the language of the GUID.

For example, 0409 hexadecimal converts to 1033 decimal, which represents English.

Sample GUID

If the first eight digits of a GUID is 9117-0407, you know that the GUID was created by the initial released version (9) of a Retail or OEM Edition (1) of Microsoft Office 2003 Professional with Microsoft FrontPage (17), and that the language of the product is German (0407 hexadecimal converts to 1031 decimal which represents German).