Office 2013 - Need to Activate WITHOUT creating MS Account!

Anonymous
2013-04-04T10:07:22+00:00

We are a small business providing IT products and support for a number of small to medium businesses in our local area. Providing new PCs with MS Office has long been a big part of what we do. With Office 2013 OEM, it seems that activation requires creating a unique MS account for each installation with no obvious way around it. 

This is utterly stupid. Office is supposed to activate on HARDWARE - not an individual. Companies that have many computers and a high turnover of staff use the same computer for many different people. Linking Office to an individual's email account is a very bad idea - especially in a business environment where using personal email is not acceptable.

Creating a company-wide MS account to activate all the software seemed like a usable workaround; until MS informed us that each activation had to be with a unique account.

Add on to this the confusion that many people face when asked to create an MS account of their own and activate their software (things that are completely unfamiliar to many of our customers) and MS seem to have created a support nightmare for us front-line support engineers.

And what about re-installing Office in the future? If an MS account is created but only used for the Office Activation, surely it will expire after so long?

And what about customers that have no internet access? They do exist! How are they supposed to use the software?

MS have tried to cut out their long-time sales partners by introducing and pushing subscription-based Office 365, which eliminates the profit we made from selling physical products with machines - and the latest Office OEM versions that we CAN sell have shot up in price to almost unsalable levels. Volume licensing is also not a solution for many businesses that simply do not have the cash flow to purchase large numbers of licenses at once. Customers also do not want to be tied in to subscription services for software that they are used to owning outright with no recurring costs.

We desperately need an easy solution to this - any suggestions appreciated. Or should I just start recommending OpenOffice to our customers now?

Thanks,

Alex

EDIT 12/04/13:

It is even worse than I thought originally. I have just been contacted by a customer complaining that they activated their new Office 2013 using the Administrator account before rolling the machine out to their user, only to find that Office then prompted the user to activate AGAIN when they logged on. it then refused to activate again, saying that it had already been activated!

This is completely unacceptable. Some customers have a large turnover of staff using the same machine; most require at least a couple of different users. What are MS playing at?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Install, redeem, activate | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-06-20T00:18:15+00:00

    Although you are correct, I don't think it's proper or moral to pass along Microsoft's rip-off subscription fee to our governments. Of course, businesses pass along everything else, including golf games and expensive dinners.

    I'll never understand why people think government should pay for them to entertain their clients. That's not what government is for.

    The government doesn't pay anything when business expenses are written off.  If you think so, you are mistaken in your idea on how this economy works.  All money is not the government's of which it  allows working citizens to keep an allotted portion as it sees fit; it is the citizens' of which we pay the government a portion supposedly equal to that share of which we utilize in doing business related to the services we elected the government maintains (i.e. that related to commerce such as roads, interstate commerce, etc.)

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-06-20T00:04:36+00:00

    Although you are correct, I don't think it's proper or moral to pass along Microsoft's rip-off subscription fee to our governments. Of course, businesses pass along everything else, including golf games and expensive dinners.

    I'll never understand why people think government should pay for them to entertain their clients. That's not what government is for.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-06-19T23:28:03+00:00

    People educated on the subject wouldn't pick the subscription unless they are in a position where a hundred bucks doesn't matter to them.

    Actually, there is an bookkeeping trick that can be used to justify 365 subscriptions IN BUSINESS. 

    Since it is a recurring fee, it (in some places) can treated as a current business expense, so it ALL can be "written Off" against business taxes.  A purchased license is considered a "capital expenditure" that must be depreciated against taxes over several years.

    It is the same shell game some places use to justify hiring "permanent temporary" contract workers/consultants.  They can be considered disposable current expenses ... <sigh>

    It is also the same reason it makes BUSINESS sense to lease a car. But IMHO it is just plain stupid for the average consumer to lease a more expensive car than they could afford to buy.  You just keep making permanent payments to the car makers, they are happy and get to resell the car for an additional profit. And all the consumer gets to do is get a new lease, and keep paying....

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-06-19T03:39:58+00:00

    Unfortunately those same people will finally get it when MS tells them their office subscription is expiring and they have to pay another hundred bucks.

    People educated on the subject wouldn't pick the subscription unless they are in a position where a hundred bucks doesn't matter to them.

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  5. Anonymous
    2014-06-18T07:54:19+00:00

    Any customer I've explicitly explained 365 to has steered well clear. 

    Though ultimately they'd prefer to use Office 2010 - and to be honest so would I!

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