Megaaz03 wrote: I bought 5 licences from microsoft. However, when it gives me an option of phone activation, obviously I choose that, but I never exceeded my 5 licences.As mentioned before, it's not just about the count / going over the number you purchased. It's also about keeping track of which PC you install each license on. Megaaz03 wrote: Now when I go back to microsoft account and check the product key, it does not match which I bought. I mean I dont want to come to any legal issues with them. But this does not seem to be straight forward.MS changed things a while back and I think you are running into this change now. The initial purchase often gives you an ID number.
You create an account with MS using that number. You are then provided with the actual license key to use during the install. If you didn't put that license key somewhere, to keep track of it, you probably are looking at the ID that came with purchase. That is meant to be different from the install key.
I had the same issue with my computer when I didnt re-image a machine, it kept the Microsoft office/office 365 trial software on the computer. Kept installing/uninstalling the Office Professional enterprise that I had installed but to no avail. Unfortunately when you uninstall office using the usual control panel uninstall it doesn't completely remove it from the registry. The only fix for me was to run the Fix It/easy fix tool from Microsoft and that completely removed office and stopped the office trial activation that kept coming up previously. Here is a link to the Microsoft uninstall page: and a direct link to the Easy Fix.
DaSchmoo wrote: I think you can only have 5 licenses tied to each Microsoft account you create so you're going to end up with multiple accounts you need to keep track of. You'll need to document what goes where for when/if you need to reinstall. It's 30 activations on Office 2013 per Microsoft account. I've got multiple email aliases pointing to the same domain mailbox to handle that. Office 2016 seems to handle the product key/activation process the same way, I can only hope there is a higher threshold for number of allowed activations. I'm done with Office. I have informed my clients that I will no longer be supplying Microsoft Office.
I have recommended that they move to Open Office with Mozilla Thunderbird as an email client. I know this likely won't be possible for larger organizations, but my biggest client has less than 100 computers. I've given them the choice to go to a subscription model if they absolutely cannot do without office, which is what Microsoft wants. So Microsoft has indeed succeeded in cutting out this middleman! I had an hour long call with the Licensing service help desk. The upshot of which is, The key you get on your Product card is a temporary activation key (my take away) Once you have activated that using an email address, your actual Product Key is listed on your Microsoft account 'my account' page. You get to it via the I want to install Office I have a disk what is my Product Key link which is appropriate to the Date that you first activated that particular Product Key.
You need to keep a record of what PC you install which Product Key on, using Which email address. Because, the Product Key is locked to the email address and (apparently) the hardware configuration. There is a lot more to it than that, but you'd probably be better off spending your time searching for an alternative product. It is because of ignorant decisions like these, and Microsoft's lack of understanding about it's customer's that I have moved many clients away from not only their Office package, but their operating system as well.
One client has replace all 30 windows desktops and office with Mac's and Libre' Office, which is free. They have had '0' problems since the switch. I'm not a Mac fan, but more and more, I see Microsoft in it's death throws, and it's because they treat their customer's like a herd of sheep. Microsoft is dead. After 20 years of making a living off of their products, I've come to the conclusion that it's time to get out of the stone age, and start making my living by supporting Apple products instead. Gregory for Microsoft wrote: Office 365 and Office 2016 are pretty much doing away with the Product key in favor of a user login.
LicenseCrawler, the key finder program we recommend for Office 2010 & 2007 product keys in that tutorial, will find your product key in just seconds. Older Versions of Microsoft Office Microsoft Office XP (Word 2002). Oct 22, 2011 - Office 2011 requires activation and is tied to your hardware so it might very well be that you need to reactivate Office 2011 after the HD change.
Each user will have 5 activations and as long as they have separate user profiles you can set this up once and as the use the Office applications they will be required to login at least once a month to keep it activated without login prompts. This really shines with SSO and ADFS / AD Sync.
Report back if you need more. Microsoft is going to push a LOT of Small Business clients away with this insanity. No one should have to sign into an account to purchase Office software unless the intent of Microsoft is to invade the user's privacy. Like many others here I will be advising users away from Microsoft products like Microsoft Office to less cumbersome products in the open-source community, like LibreOffice, which has matured significantly since it forked from OpenOffice.org.. Gregory for Microsoft wrote: Office 365 and Office 2016 are pretty much doing away with the Product key in favor of a user login. Each user will have 5 activations and as long as they have separate user profiles you can set this up once and as the use the Office applications they will be required to login at least once a month to keep it activated without login prompts.
This really shines with SSO and ADFS / AD Sync. Report back if you need more. We don't want Microsoft accounts, we want to activate and use the software we legally paid for without the constant reminders to login to Microsoft. Some of our laptops are used literally 'in the field' where there is no internet connection!
Don't you see a problem with this? Just stumbled upon yet another issues with this crap. I installed Office 2016 H&B on a PC end of January 2016.
The PC was stored since then. Now, probably since it wasnt used for so long, Office wants to activate again. It asks for the Office account and password, but then it shows me a list of all the licences that are linked to that account, but they dont show me the licence key, they are all named the same with (1), (2) and so on. How the hell am I suppose to chose the right one Microsoft? And I know that I can deactivate a perfectly good licence if I chose the wrong one. That shit should not be called Home and Business.or at least, a business with less than 10 PCs or something.