Basic and frustrating: Pages will not accept my serial number

Question

My wife's iBook's hard drive recently died. We were able to save most things with Data Rescue even though the disk won't mount (bravo Data Rescue). Until she gets a new internal drive she would like to use the computer with an external Firewire drive, which has all her docs on it.
That's fine, but Pages, installed on the external drive, won't accept the serial number that came with the software and that worked before. Come to think of it, I now recall there was some problem the FIRST time. I was on the phone with Apple for quite some time when finally the guy said something that made a difference, but I can't remember what it was. All I know is that I have entered many serial numbers for software, and iWork is the only one that hasn't just worked. Anyone know what the trick is, or how I can get another number?

Answer 1

Bob,
I think to start I have more questions than answers.
Are you started up from the external drive you're trying to run iWork from? Are you logged in as an administrator when trying to enter the serial number? Are you trying to enter the serial number for iWork '05 or '06? The font used for the serial numbers with iWork '05 was a very bad choice & led to a lot of confusion. I wrote a user tip, iWork: serial number tip, that addressed most of the common problems. Other than the confusion of letters & numbers, the other possibilities are probably applicable to iWork '06. Try these & then post back if it works or not. If it doesn't, your answers to my initial questions might lead us to the solution.