Install Office 2016 OEM without Live account

Sushma,

This isn't helpful at all.  What Brian said is spot on.  My company is an IT consulting company for many small businesses.  We order computers from many vendors such as Dell which has OEM licensing.  I cannot activate office with my Microsoft account, nor should I.  And I cannot setup Microsoft accounts for all of my clients.  This is time consuming and frankly a waste of time.  We should not have to do this.  We sell hundreds of computers a year, and can't possibly force my clients to create a Microsoft Account for their office license.  

That link did not help at all.  There needs to be a fix immediately.  Otherwise the giant of Microsoft will suffer great losses in sales.  I think that many IT companies like mine will start looking at alternate products at this point.  

So please help us to help keep you in business.

Thank you

Alex

Sorry Mr Microsoft support Engineer, you very definitely do not understand how anyone feels about this situation.

Very glad I opened this thread, now. I thought maybe I was missing some simple workaround or was the only one bothered by all of this nonsense. As one user posted, it seems that the same applies to the retail license the same as OEM. So even if using a corporate MS account to activate these office licenses en masse, what happens when you sell a batch of old computers three years from now, along with the Windows & legitimate Office license, as part of a rotating replacement plan? How does the new user, wanting to clean up the computer, after wiping & reinstalling Windows, then reinstall Office on the same computer without your corporate activation account? Sure, I'm going to give my corporate MS account information to Uri's Used Computer sales so they can use the license they legitimately purchased with the used computer.

It is obvious this is obnoxious behavior from Microsoft. Not sure if they are mean, or just stupid. But the big question is whether we can get Microsoft to reconsider this obnoxious behavior? Their tech support has no say over how things are done. Is there anybody at Microsoft that actually cares what the customer thinks? Have they finally just said, "Well, we have them now. Time to force everyone to drink the green Kool-Aid to prove their loyalty?"

Maybe MS will get the picture if Dell's (and HP, etc, etc) business sales start falling off. For sure, I will not be buying Office 2016 on any new computers from Dell. I would rather purchase 2013 retail as long as I can still find it. At least,  with that, I already have the downloaded installation media and know I can still activate it purely with the product key.

And it is not even a question of price. I have always said, "If you want to use a Microsoft product, you have to pay the price." But all of this account-based activation puts it over the top for me, and I can just save a bundle of money by switching to a free product. I am seriously considering "Goodbye Microsoft, hello, LibreOffice..."

I posted over on the Office 365 forum as Sushma suggested but got only a list of which products require which type of account (personal or private). That again missed the point entirely (if not downright avoiding it).

It is nice to know I am not the only one beginning to suspect that the activation difficulties may be intentional. Of course, it affects the independent consultant far worse than anyone else. Larger companies can take their soma (with a nod to Huxley's Brave New World) and have no problem setting up corporate accounts; single-user companies that do their own software have little choice and must do the same or set up the MS account in the owner's (or user's) name.

But the outside consultant that provides service and computers to small businesses is peculiarly stuck. We cannot use our own accounts, or the licenses are stuck to us forever. We are not about to share our Live IDs & passwords with someone trying to reinstall Office on a computer we originally provided. But the owner's birthday is also none of our business--and not easily obtainable at midnight even if it were. And what if a computer (or the entire business, with its computers) is sold? How does the new owner reinstall Office if required? I guess that is one way for MS to generate more revenue--make the activation process quirky enough that it is actually easier to just buy a fresh copy than it is to reinstall.

After several hours of beating one's head against the wall on this at midnight, it definitely leads one to feel as though Microsoft has more sinister designs towards independent consulting--or perhaps toward independent thought entirely.

I totally agree, the OEM activation process is an absolute nightmare.  And even if you're able to setup or access a client's MS Live account, good luck trying to identify which licenses are tied to which devices.  There's also a limit on the number of license registrations per account (don't recall what it is, think it's maybe 10 or so?) which often requires creating an additional account(s) to handle all of the licenses.  So now, you also have to maintain a spreadsheet or some kind of documentation of what licenses are tied to which device and which registration account...   it's a huge PITA.  After all this, then you pray you never have to reinstall office at some point in the future...

I know that Dell's (and I think HP's) OEM Office keys were able to activate without an account, but right now, computers that are shipping with Office 2016 license have the 2013 CTR installation and you're forced to go through the Live account registration process to get 2016 installed.  Maybe this will change once the 2016 OPK is out and Dell gets that into their base image - not sure how long this will be though.

This isn't anything new, it's been this way beginning with Office 2013 and continues with 2016.  Microsoft has pretty much ignored all complaints related to this and I suspect they really don't care as they continue to beat the O365 drum and march everyone towards a subscription model (and having a MS Live account gives them a great hook into these customers).  Makes one wonder if this OEM activation mess isn't largely by design...