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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?
Processes in Microsoft 365 for setting up Office apps, redeeming product keys, and activating licenses.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
This doesn't answer the question. The Administrator Portal is for Office 365 not Office 2013 on premise. The answer is that if you buy the individual licenses versus the subscription it is a nightmare to install and support.
We are a small shop doing repairs of hardware and software for our customers and we are running into the exact same issue.
After opening an Office 2013 package and starting the installation, we had to call the customer to get their birth date (of all things). The customer almost refused, which would have left us with an unusable $200+ Office package. As it is I was forced to create a new MS account for the customer even though they didn't want one.
None of our customers want Office 365, so that is not a solution as it causes more problems than it's worth, and no one wants to pay $100 a year for Office. We will never purchase or recommend a customer purchase Office 365. In fact, after bringing Office 365 in for us to install, several of our customers have returned it to Staples, unopened, after discovering they have to pay $100 a year (MAJOR RIP-OFF).
So, here I am with a dead computer. I have saved all the pst files for the email accounts, and I am installing Office 2013 for the customer. I have to create an account they don't want, I have to give their email to MS, which they also don't want, and they told me to set the birth date to 1/1/2000 because they feel (and so do I) that it's none of MS's business.
Now, after nearing the end of the install, Microsoft in their fabulous wisdom has decided they have to send some code to the customer's email address.
REALLY????
How stupid is this? Their old computer is toast, and I cannot access their email account. yet they want to send a code to that account. Freaking brilliant!
Man, I would fire whoever thought of that in an instant.
So, from this point on, we will be recommending people go with Coral office suite, or Open Office. I have had it with Microsoft and their stupid freaking ideas. Don't even get me started on the customer who forgot both his email and log-in passwords in Windows 8. That was a pure nightmare.
In short, get stuffed MS. We will be avoiding your products as much as possible from this point on.
I would like to use stronger words but then this commend would end up deleted.
For everyone still struggling with this when you buy a retail box or Product Keycard this is the solution I have been using for a while now. Doing this you don't have to mess with a Microsoft Account at all and the software will be activated just like previous versions - silently in the background after the install.
Check out the website below for downloads of the full Office 2013 installers from official Microsoft servers. Get the downloads you need (or all for safe keeping and future use in situations) and then you will have the offline installer so to speak. Using this there is an option to install the product using a serial number instead and then you just use the serial number that came with your retail box or Product Keycard without the need to create a Microsoft Account to tie it to with every installation.
Office 2013 Direct Download Links
http://www.heidoc.net/joomla/technology-science/microsoft/73-office-2013-direct-download-links
Hi JReese,
I was very excited to try your suggestion as I had a VSIO Pro 2013 to install...
Still had to tie it with MS account...
I don't know why Visio would be different but I have been using it for Office 2013 Home & Business and Professional Product Keycards for a few months and it has worked flawless without the need to touch a Microsoft account.
Make sure you are catching the "Enter a product key instead" option (picture attached) on the Activation screen at the start of the installation.