Install Office 2016 OEM without Live account

I agree with Rohn007 here. If everyone that has this problem would vote for one of the existing complaints here, the collective voice might get some attention:

http://office.uservoice.com/forums/285186-general

Be sure to vote for one of the existing ones; there are already three on the same subject, and having multiple ones all complaining about account-based activation is likely to dilute our voice. And unless you have a better use for your votes, vote three on the same issue Better to have 90 votes on one activation-related issue than 30 votes on each of three different ones that, in effect, all say the same thing.

Any ideas ?

We need OEM without LiveID activation...

Many thanks.....

Add me to the list of annoyed consultants!

I'm just adding my voice to the discussion so I can come back and find whatever solution is discovered by some angry and exhausted sysadmin who returns to save us from this "feature".

Hopefully the fix comes soon.

The problem is now in the public domain:

http://www.crn.com.au/News/412221,small-resellers-frustrated-by-office-2016-install-nightmares.aspx

One IT support guy installing Office 2016 here. What I've found out so far:

Installer

The installer is unbelievably buggy, even buggier than in 2013 version. Either Click To Run downloader minimal variant or full DVD ISO are mostly able to install applications (Excel, Word) themselves but stall at 80 % or 90 % installing additional services, virtual printers and so on. On my side it could be resolved by going to Windows' Control Panel - Programs and functions - Office 2016 - right Click - repair - FULL ONLINE REPAIR. It redownloaded everything (funny, isn't it) and completed to 100 %.

The C2R installer is able to pretend activity but Windows' Resource watcher doesn't show any activity from installer neither on harddisk, CPU, RAM nor network. Time-outs are set to ridiculous values such as 8 hours. Error codes are badly documented, sometimes completely missing (evergreen "Something went wrong").

Some issues can be resolved by famous Mr. Fixit but only some.

If you want to be sure that there are no remains of previous installations, use some of these VBS scripts:

• Uninstall Office 2013 @GitHub
• The White pages: How to Completely Remove All Traces of Office 2010 From Your System

Thanks to those nice people.

Activation

Office 2016 requires activation both for retail codes and OEM codes (DELL). They need to be redeemed in MS Account and transformed to product-key. No exceptions.

The practice here is that we store in our internal PC assets database these information for future purposes. For every PC or laptop we store product key and original redeem code as we don't want to bother with MS Account messy list of activated products (recently they've added date of activation at least, yay!!).

Selling computer out of small business company should not be problem: it's possible to give the new owner product key (not redemption key!!) along with installation media (either burned ISO or ISO file itself) and whenever he needs to reinstall and reactivate the product he'll just insert the product key and won't be asked to log-in to any other MS account as the redemption process has been already done. The product will get activated just as in good old days.

The only drawback of such process will be that all the product keys will pile up in company's MS Account as they cannot be transferred to MS accounts of new owners.

Activation issue

There is also some huge mess with redeem codes issued by OEM manufacturers such as DELL. You get your new laptop along with Office 2016 redeem key, you log in to your MS Account trying to play Micorosoft's game nicely, put in redeem code to get your product activated, your product key and your installation media and all you get is  "The page is taking longer to load than expected." or "The account isn't associated with this office product." No activation at all, no installation, no joy. Support engineers suggest using IE 11. Weeee! Fun!

I've experienced this with DELL supplies a few times and it's resolved by taking these steps (in case you've bought your Office 2016 from them along with new HW), they're aware of this situation and will help:

1. Contact DELL (or your OEM manufacturer) and let them know
   • your HW Service Tag,
   • your Office 2016 product key (which is actually not a product key, but redeem code),
   • your MS Account ID (in form of login e-mail address)
2. DELL will verify this and will forward your request to Microsoft
3. Microsoft will send you an URL with super long hash which leads you to login into your MS Account and will add your MS Office 2016 to it.

At first, Microsoft tried to refuse to issue multiple new keys for one MS Account. After pushing them a little bit, DELL got them to do so. It's still possible to activate and bind multiple Office 2016 licenses to one small business MS Account. We've got 12 products activated there and still can add more. I'm still not aware of any limit, some say 20, some say 50. Dunno.

URL sent by Microsoft to redeem new product key looks like this:

setup.office.com/?token=<superlonghash>&ctid=<8chars>-<4chars>-<4chars>-<4chars>-<12chars>

By the way: Office 365 must be genuinelly bound in 1:1 scenario to MS Accounts. This means that if you activate Office 365 using your MS Account, you won't be able to activate any other Office 365 product there. Be prepared.

Dell is aware of all this and pushes MS to resolve the issue. To public and to individuals, MS still plays dumb. To important business OEM partners, MS tries at least.

This is all I've found out in last two weeks trying to activate and install two instances of fresh Office 2016 purchases. Microsoft, thanks for having fun. You never disappoint.