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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.
Never was an employee of MS, just another user trying to help others.
Been using MS products for a really long time and so may be inclined to be a little biased. Never had the fortune of working with apple products for a long time.
MS just don't care what we think or how much of a pain in the A** this is for IT. We roll out MANY VLK's, and those are a cinch, but for the smaller clients, they do NOT want Office365. In fact, anything cloud is a big deal in Canada, due to HIPPA, PIPPA, FIPPA, you name it, It technically illegal to setup any health care or doctors on Office 365 due to servers located on US soil, just as doctors here cannot use Gmail, Hotmail etc.
MS have turned this into such a colossal PITA, and as a result we made a singular account initially to process these installs, but now we have issues with confusing who's who with the account keys and also issues with clients randomly de-activating during the work day and having to call in for a remote help desk support session to re-activate.
As a result I have been referring more small clients to Open Office and WLM.
Microsoft has to have your customers email address so they can market to your customers and cut you out of the loop. This is why you are referred to as a "Valuable Partner" . You have been trained now, with the branding iron, so you will not make the same mistake again and register under your own email address or an alias for your customer.
You can go to https://signup.live.com and create an account using the customers real email address ie: ******@warnerbros.com so you do not need a bogus hotmail/skype/outlook/live address.
The problem for we "Valued Partners" is that I believe a validation email is sent to that address and action needs to be taken to activate the account and product. They want the names of the first born, favorite author, childhood hero, name of your prom date, size of your underwear or other information, along with age, ****, phone number or other demographic and personal tracking information. We're often doing this work at the clients desk, then we have to go fetch them to respond to this address, and answer the foolish questions, which cost valuable time and money.
We buy Office 2013 Home and Business for $219, and have to sell it for $219. The profit margin is zero. After we install it, it ends up being a negative profit. We end up losing money every time we upgrade a SOHO client. We only have 12 working hours in a day, and its silly to have to 'spend' 20 minutes with every activation.
Yes, we could TRY to sell them open license, the same product for $100 or more extra, but this is SOHO, and all they want to do is go back to work (and find out all the buttons have been changed and the ribbon button hidden by default). If we stick around, it end up costing another 30 minutes to tweek the install so they can at least find the new ribbon with the mixed-up shortcuts.
MS should really send some scouts out in the field to try to make a living selling this stuff and get some real world feedback from the techs in the trenches, and the poor end-users who are subject to an endless shuffling of menu items and feature removals, like MS Picture manager..... but that is another rant.
my farther-in-law is 91, all he doesn't believe in the internet and thus doesn't have an internet connection or email account, nor does he want one. all he uses his laptop for is the odd game of solitaire and writing his memoires for his own (and families) personal enjoyment.
some salesman at the local PC store (name omitted but they have a service dept that should be called 'Noclue' not 'Knowhow' but that's a different story) convinced him he should upgrade his old laptop to a modern touch screen windows 8.1 with office 2013.
now as far as he can tell he cant use this new machine without connecting to the internet and entering an email address, which he has no wish to to so.
Thanks Microsoft!!!! I've now got either a 400 mile round trip to pick up his new machine take it to the local library to get wifi access, create a couple off bogus accounts so it can be activated, or completely wiping win 8.1 and installing *Ubuntu* least that way everything will work without the need of internet access he'll still have his games, and free office for his memoires.
+1 Ubuntu. Free your self with Libre Office.
MS has a 30 0r 60 day money back guarantee for Office, so you can call them and get your money back.
Can he take it back to the store? Maybe he should trade it in at the Apple store. :)