Office 2016 activation

I sent out a pair of Surface 3's last week with Office 2016. Yes, you have to use a Microsoft account (at least on the Home & Business license I bought) and no, it's not locked to that account/user.

If you are using volume licensed software, it certainly won't be locked to a user.

Create a Microsoft account for the organization, this is just assigning ownership of that product key. Office product keys are per device licenses, so it will work for shared computers. 

this article explains Office licensing if you are interested. 

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mssmallbiz/archive/2007/12/06/6684366.aspx

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.

Not sure about this one. Perhaps ask the sales rep about the keys for starters? I was able to install and active alongside 2013 yesterday but activated using our partner key.

Da_Schmoo 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.

Actually you can have 20 licenses per account.  We have multiple accounts created.  Pain in the rear, but it is what it is.

Derek_A wrote:

Da_Schmoo 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.

Actually you can have 20 licenses per account.  We have multiple accounts created.  Pain in the rear, but it is what it is.

Better than the 5 I thought it was or used to be.  Thanks for the update.

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.

Da_Schmoo 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.

Thanks for the info everyone, looks like we have some discussions to be had here.

hmmm, good to get away from product keys, but I can see a bit of a nightmare with having your Microsoft account.

perhaps this is Microsoft's way of saying that in another 5 - 10 years everything will be office 365?

watch this space I guess

This is how Adobe handles it, sigh... how annoying for Microsoft to do this.

So let me get this straight... With a retail key you have to have a "Live Account", with 10 licenses per account? Is it the same with an OEM key?

We are currently downloading the offline installer for office 2016 which seems to give a prompt to enter a product key based on the screen shots. I'll send it update if all goes well. 

This is the link we were looking at in our IT department. 

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/How-do-I-use-the-Office-2016-offline-installer-f0a85fe7-118...%uFEFF

How did you get on ?

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. 

What a crock of shit!  As a domain admin who handles over 30 SMBs  I will now have to give each user a logon and password for a Microsoft acount???  I have over 450 endpoints for users and I hate to say it i am recomending  to my customers to use either Libre Office or Open Office to save over $200 per seat.  No wonder my brother-in-law retired from the Msft BOD as governance chair!

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.

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?

AMEN!!!

Anyone find a solution to 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.