Office 2013 - Need to Activate WITHOUT creating MS Account!

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

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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.

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.)

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.

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....