Office XP pro activation

I was given microsoft office XP pro academic edition 2002. I have had it for sometime now and never used it. I suspect that the last user (my cousin, computer illiterate) activated it maybe once or twice (just a rough guess).
I will be passing this on to someone else soon, but before I do so, is there anyway to check how many activation's it has remaining? If I need to activate it, will it ruin the activation for the next user?

dont think office needs to be actived :S ? well at least ive never had to ?
nt 2 sure..

Yes, it needs to be activated. As for finding the number of times it has been done/can be done, I dont think there is a set limit or a way to find out. The problem with Microsoft's Activation, is that there is no way to deactivate when switching machines. The only thing you can do is try to activate it, and if it fails, call up MSFT.

Yes MS Office apps do require activation now.

I think MS clears their activation logs every few months, every three months I think. So if it hasn't been activated in 3 months or so you should be ok. And yes it will run the activation for whoever installs the app.