mac os reinstall

ok im planning to format my hard drive and reinstall EVERYTHING. so most things i can just copy paste to the mybook. but i have a few questions. i have office. can i back it up? or do i need to reinstall it? if so what would be involved? do i just install it and enter the same licensee key as before? do i need to call Microsoft? also. im going to reinstall snow leopard. can i just simply format and reinstall?
thanks.

You can do a clean install, and then restore from backup, which will bring everything back, but you may have to reinstall Office, but, there should be 3keys on the packaging. Or, you can just do a clone.
Why are you reformatting your hard drive?

The answer to this may give better advise as to what method you use.

In fact you can use the original key code to reinstall and on activating, Microsoft will simply issue a new Product ID Number. and large applications such as Adobe suites and Office at times do not copy too well.

ah thats what i figured (about copying) reminds me of windows. lol. thanks so much.
sooo. what do i do about installing snow leopard? can i just pop the disc in and format and install? or is there some kind of registration i need to do?

Once again...... why the reformatting?
If you want to install Snow Leopard, you can either pop in the disc, and follow the prompts, or boot from the disc holding down C when you hear the chime and let go of the C when you see the spinning pin wheel.
If you give a little more info as to what you are trying to do and why, it will allow for the best solution to come your way.
As I heard recently ....help us help you

im trying to cleanly set up boot camp and just clean the computer for max hard drive space before i partition. i was getting some errors last time i tried so i want a nice clean start. it recommended that i format my hard drive

Back up anything you need saved to an external drive using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner, partitiion the drive even if you want a single partition, using GUID, and format and proceed with your installation and then Boot Camp.

Read the Boot Camp Instructions thoroughly first.