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
    2016-09-21T17:57:12+00:00

    Yes,

    I think I will discuss this option as well as OpenOffice with the staff and see what they say.  I hope I can clearly articulate the amount of hassle MS is putting us through, and perhaps that will convince them of the switch.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-09-21T15:37:11+00:00

    MS doesn't seem to care about this. Maybe try getting the organization to switch to LibreOffice? That's what I've done at home and haven't missed MS Office at all but I understand it's harder for businesses to make the switch.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-09-21T15:30:12+00:00

    So I guess we are still stuck with these problems? 

    I am in the midst of helping a small private educational organization upgrade and was looking for a way to roll out office 2013 easily....

    Is there still no workaround or official solution?

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-04-28T10:32:31+00:00

    The only way i see it is that Libre Office and Open Office will remain as the only usable office software.

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  5. Anonymous
    2016-02-23T00:18:27+00:00

    Agree, and it seems to get worse and worse. This is wasting my time and client's money. It is beyond pathetic, and only increases the chance that I'll start moving people away from MS products of all kinds.

    I need the  OPK for OEM reload, but don't have it accessible - download? Heck no! 

    Customer bought retail copy of 2013; keycard says to redeem at office.com/setup . . . but it only takes me to a different version download. Another hour wasted before MS helped enough to finally get all the things straight. 

    Now, I don't claim to be a genius but I keep having problems over and over - new ones, repeat of old ones. Things I have battled a number of times come up again and always back to square one, and I am very sure at this point, is is not me. Missing download links, incorrect redirection, etc. Even the simplest scenarios are now impossible with 2013 and later. Not to mention updates that keep breaking things, screwing up Outlook, the activation instrumentation etc.

    Thanks for basically STEALING from people. Honest to God, I DESPISE you now.  I am out here trying to do my due diligence, ensuring clients are using legal software way. etc., but keep getting punished more and more for doing things the right way. DIAF

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