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
    2013-08-19T16:53:35+00:00

    Can we have Windows 7 and Office 2010 back on sale please? "They just worked". Seriously, all the added security and accounts and online **** to install a bought version just makes the pirated one so much easier to use, for free.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-08-19T13:35:25+00:00

    Only option is to keep sending feedback using official mediums.

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-08-16T09:40:58+00:00

    So, in a support environment where new computers go out with Office 2013 OEM (AND the users don't want to RENT Office 365) the only way to activate Office is for the user to create a new Microsoft account?

    Users want their computers to just work. And bosses don't want licenses registered to different Microsoft account that a user has setup.

    Is Microsoft making it difficult to push people to a SaaS type model? *It sure seems that way.*On another related note: inability to uninstall Outlook 2013 for users who are using Exchange 2003 is another huge problem. Send To Mail Recipient function doesn't work anymore (as it's trying to call Outlook 2013).

    Microsoft are not helping the smaller customers.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-08-15T12:42:51+00:00

    For single computer purchases, you can install it without activating it. Just give them the product key and instructions on how to activate.

    Just LOL....

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  5. Anonymous
    2013-08-14T21:28:39+00:00

    Office 365 and Click to Run have changed the distribution paradyme (wow, I never thought I'd be able to use that word in a sentence legitimately <grin> rather than the "paradyme shift" cliche") . 

    For single computer purchases, you can install it without activating it. Just give them the product key and instructions on how to activate.

    For multi computer customers you, and they, have to get used using the 365 "Administration Portal" to distribute software in the corporate setting.  With Office 365, a new "install" literally takes minutes from scratch. And it can be driven from the Portal or locally after the user has been authorized to install 365.  Check out the "Garage" series of blogs. It focuses on installs.  They even have a set of stupid stunts showing 365 installs in dumb situations (parachuting ... )

    http://blogs.office.com/b/office\_blog/archive/2013/05/29/garage-series-best-of-stunts-and-demos.aspx

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