Install Office 2016 OEM without Live account

Why did Microsoft even attempt to sell perpetual version of Office and yet make it frustrating to activate? Won't this piss off customers to the competitors instead of Office 365 instead?

1. There are usually two types of licenses. User-base licenses with multiple devices or device-base licenses with multiple users. By forcing an online user-base Account for a device-base license, Microsoft is indirectly forcing a single user-base restriction into a single device-base license!
2. It was easy manage, activate and transfer a retail license between devices in the past with just the license key because the physical box is always kept in the company regardless of the turnover rate. Now it's tag to an online account where the ones who registered them are likely to have left the company without handing over the login credentials to their replacement, and took the company license with them away for personal use instead. The company owners really do not want to be bothered by all these operation issues to personally have to manage this themselves. How is this a better form of security?

The subscription model was Microsoft's announced plan when Office 2013 was released with the caution that it would be the last version available to buy outright and future versions would be subscription only.  That announcement accomplished what MS probably wanted:  Many, many users of Office 2007 and 2010 rushed to the store to buy Office 2013.  Then, contrary to the 2013 warning, 2016 came out as a buy or lease version, just like 2013.  And many people convinced that 2016 would be the last, bought it.

When Adobe announced Photoshop CC as a subscription product, users of Photoshop CS5 and earlier, rushed to upgrade to CS6.  I already had CS6 and have stuck with it even after CC was released in 2013.  My wife subscribed to CC for $10 a month.  Since then, she has paid over $500 to Adobe for several versions and subversions, and around half the updates are bug fixes of earlier versions.  Adobe went to the subscription model because people were not buying their upgraded versions.  Why? Because their new versions were not sufficiently improved to warrant the $200 upgrade price.  Some of us wondered where their motivation to improve would be when they collected money from users just for using the product.  Read the release history on Wikipedia, and you'll see that the doubters may have been right.

Will that be the case with Office, once it is a subscription-only product?  I'd bet on it.

This is the original problem:

"I manage IT services for several small businesses and periodically need to purchase new computers with Office. I just purchased a new Dell laptop with the OEM version of Office 2016 Home & Business. It will not let me activate it without adding it to a MS account.

I know this is a perennial question, beginning with Office 2013, that is a major headache for independent technical consultants that support small businesses, as I do. But I have never seen a solid answer as to how to get this installed on the computer without the MS account--just a lot of try this, try that. This is NOT Office 365, just Office H & B 2016!"

I believe that I have addressed the issue.  I have nothing to do with Microsoft.  Microsoft is on a mission move to on an online service and with in mind to make it as difficult as possible to use the perpetual version of Office and force people to use Office 365.

And so, here we are 2.5 years after the original problem was posed, and we're no closer to making Microsoft customers happy.  Along the way various solutions have been suggested.  Some would work for some people and not for others.  Meanwhile, Microsoft stands with one foot on the dock and one foot on the boat, and neither the dock nor the boat is the answer for all users.  I've just opted to retire as an IT consultant and general purpose IT person.  What I've found is that for a very small company with, say ten users or less, the necessary record keeping for ten bogus Microsoft accounts can work.  Moderate turnover of personnel is manageable.  A spreadsheet with computer info and major software info can be maintained, and all works OK.  This also works for home users.  The five user home version works nicely, and at home one does not usually have a turnover issue.

Larger company--more than ten employees and certainly more than twenty or so--it's just easier to use the Office 365 approach.  Get the cheapest mail option ($4 a month per account) and separate licenses for the programs wanted.  $8.25 a month for Office gets all but the less common (Visio, Expresssion Web, etc.).  You assign a mailbox license and a program license to each user (NOT the combined mailbox and software, which is both $.50 a month more expensive and less flexible.)  Someone quits, and maybe you keep the mailbox open for a couple months.  Add a mailbox license for the replacement and move the program license to the new employee.  It might cost a little more, if you normally wouldn't buy each new Office version, but on balance, the simplicity of that approach is worth something, too.

Note.  I'm a Microsoft Accounting "Partner" with the annual Action Pack.  Since I'm retiring, I'll not renew it this year, and I'll have to figure out what to do with my file server, two desktops and a laptop.  Office 365 was part of the Action Pack and was an excellent value until MS removed the public website from Office 365.  Now it's only an OK value.  If my licenses expire or get canceled, I may or may not keep the $4 a month mailboxes, but if I keep Office, it will be via a 5-user home version from Costco.  Or I may just use OpenOffice or LibreOffice (which several of my clients have moved to).  I really like Outlook, though, so sticking with MS Office 2016 for the rest of my life, may be the answer!

P.S. I don't know who this Ron Barker is, but clearly he still doesn't understand the original question or what's going on in the rest of this thread.  If he's a Microsoft employee, then that helps explain why Microsoft is profitable and out of touch!

PS: and yes I know that Office 2016 is slightly different in that it forces you to use a Microsoft Account, that is because people were installing Office 2013 without using a Microsoft Account and could not access their Office Account.  The same with the manufacturers, such as Dell, in the early days did not understand that the end users Microsoft Account had to be used.