Office 2013 - Need to Activate WITHOUT creating MS Account!

me too, I have to same problem with activation. One Hotmail account only handle 10 keys. It really wasting my time to do the installation and activation.

In addition, In some way, I can activate the office 2013 with phone instead of create MS account and do it online. Sorry, I forget how to do it. unplug the network cable. @@@!!@@@

Another shortcoming when purchasing MS Office in any way other than through a volume license:  The "Click-to-Run" technique MS uses for those purchases installs a version that CANNOT be managed by WSUS for updates.  It has its own, INDIVIDUAL update settings and does not interact with Microsoft's own update services on a server in a small business domain managed environment.  Small Business service providers cannot confirm that MSO 2013 installations are up to date and cannot control that aspect of their environment without checking each computer individually.  This is another example of poor support of a sector Microsoft says is key to their company's strategy! 

The only way to get WSUS management is through purchasing a volume license agreement version and those are typically more expensive than the boxed product.  There isn't even a version analogous to MSO Home & Business available (to the best of my understanding).  You must buy MSO Standard, which is more expensive and includes different components (making it more expensive!).

Microsoft:   Any rationale to this strategy?  Any intention to rectify this problem?  It IS a problem for small business and will drive away customers in the long run...

I feel your pain.

Microsoft is in such a hurry to crush pirates that they are stomping all over their legitimate customers. At this point, I am automatically installing Open Office on all new computers going out the door. We no longer purchase Microsoft Office, which is their loss considering we were purchasing Office for thousands of dollars per year.

Now, if a customer mentions this to us, we tell them two things:

1. Stay away from Office 360 because it's subscription based and after a few years you're paying more for it than you would if you just purchase it up front.
2. We will no longer install Office. If the customer requires Microsoft Office for some reason, they have to purchase it and install it themselves.

We have stopped wasting so much time with Microsoft. If they can't see things from their customer's point of view, then they can just do without us as a customer.

The really great thing is, we have been hearing back from many of our customers thanking us for saving them so much money. They say Open Office is doing a great job for them so far, and they're glad they didn't waste hundreds of dollars on Microsoft Office.

Way to drive customer's away Microsoft. Good job.

I am happy to see that many more people found the way you need to install Office Home & Business 2013 rediculous.

A customer of mine ordered about 10 licenses and so I ordered 10 sets and went on there to install it.

When I was confronted with this registration issue I created one microsoft account and went on with the installation.

Than I went to the second computer and logged on with the microsoft account I just created and installed a second version.

When I was at the third computer the setup came with some kind of error about registration (max installations reached), I called Microsoft and the woman at the other line had no idea why the error came and she made some change on her side and I could continue. (basically she reset the instalation counter on the microsoft side)

Mind you I used the same email address to logon but I did use different registration numbers each time.

Then of course 2 or three computers later it went wrong again. Same error max installations reached.

Called microsoft again and now I got another woman and she more or less blamed me, it was my mistake to use the same email address.

Apperently (I couldn't find that it was mandatory anywhere) you must register each version with it's own email address or microsoft account.

When I complained that this was never mentioned anywhere, she bluntly told me that I should have read the text that comes up during installation.

So it was my mistake and my fault. Well anyway she wasn't friendly.

She did tell me that for businesses I should have bought business licences. I know the big guys (multinationals etc) buy just a license. They pay less but than again they buy thousands of licenses.

So apperently today even smaller businesses MUST buy plain licenses.

The boxes containing Office Home and Business 2013 I bought where only for very small businesses and therefor each computer needs a microsoft account. PS that it is for very small businesses is not mentioned anywhere on the box.

When I asked what she could do for me.... Well she could also reset the installation counter for the licenses I used. But she also mentioned that after a new update the systems could again mention that they need registration.

So for those systems I disabled the Office automatic update and for the remaining computer I created new microsoft accounts. Like ******@outlook.com. In order not to forget the email adres and the password I used I wrote on each box with a license that location of the computer, the email address and the password.

If they want to have a billion unused microsft account we can oblige.

This time I logged onto my microsoft account that I first created and I did see all the licences I added. But they didn't tell the license number so it just said that I had 5 or 6 times Office Home and Business. So reinstallation is not a real option as still you do not know which of these you should use. And before I calle Microsoft and had the counter rest I did try this, but it seemed that no matter which one I selected, it used just one license number.

I was very very very very very upset that day about Microsoft.

They should be happy that we sell legal versions, and making us jump through 20 different hoops before we can install their software is crazy. And nobody, really nobody reads these 20 pages of legal mumbo jumbo that appears when you install the software. And it is also crazy that you would have to go through all this to find out that you should have one microsoft account per computer.

Next time I might advise my client to go for OpenOffice which is also very good but which is completely free.

The thing that upset me most is that they kind of put the blame on me and that they forget that I represent a paying customer that ordered 10 licenses, which is serious money.

I hope I helped someone not to make the mistake of putting multiple office licenses to one microsoft account. But I also hope that if many people complain that Microsoft will change this.

PS It has been about half a year ago that I installed this and it is running fine up to now. So having the counter reset at the microsoft side and disabeling updates for Office seems to work fine.

Of course people should buy legal software and of course software needs to be registered, but cherish your customer and do not punish them for buying your software.

Greetings Clemens Linders

I

In Canada, expenses such as meals and entertainment (eg.  tickets to sporting events) can be applied against your income, in this case up to 50% of the expense. So, I can take clients to games, and get the government to pay for half of it by applying that amount as a deduction to my income. This is what I was referring to when questioning why "government should pay for them to entertain their clients". As far as I know, this is similar to how it works in the U.S. as well.