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

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.

0 comments No comments

103 answers

Sort by: Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2015-06-29T21:50:04+00:00

    I found this to be the best solution:

    https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-fresh/

    While I certainly agree this is a great option for my home computer (and what I currently have installed) and I'd love to switch the company over to it, it's not going to be an option until they create an Outlook replacement (which I'm not holding my breath for).  It's so ingrained in the regular workflow that learning to live without it would be too much to ask of the company as a whole.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  2. Anonymous
    2015-06-30T02:18:12+00:00

    If I remember correctly, there is a way to do a non-internet email address required install of Windows 8 but not for Office 365 (just for Office 2013 Pro Plus).

    This tip may help AFTER you install with MS account:

    http://www.infoworld.com/article/2606393/office-software/85529-12-enraging-Office-2013-flaws-and-how-to-fix-them.html#slide8

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  3. Anonymous
    2015-08-31T14:09:14+00:00

    Wish I had read this before I wasted 140.00 on Office 2013

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  4. Anonymous
    2015-11-24T21:44:44+00:00

    Due to this very frustrating administration gauntlet, I have started the process of moving all of our techs over to Samsung android tablets.  After this, we will start selling these to customers as well.  The Microsoft way of business needs to stop.  I'm tired of spending hours on issues that are clearly process related and have nothing to do with true technical problem solving.

    Nothing is worse or more boring to administer than Microsoft products in general.  (Except for most legacy enterprise routers)

    If I'm going to pay $500 for a computer and then an additional $500 for Microsoft products to run on it, I expect better technical agility and customer empathy.  Especially with the alternatives available.

    I'm probably not the only one moving away from Microsoft.  Other software alternatives are becoming more and more viable in the office setting.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  5. Anonymous
    2016-01-27T10:42:01+00:00

    Whoever came up with this needs to be fired or worse, We have two choices as either we use one account to activate all our Office/Access products(This is completely unworkable because there is on way of telling which computer a product should be installed to)

    Or you can go through the headache of getting every customer to make a live account and that's another headache of a password for them to remember.

    What an absolute nightmare.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments