Install Office 2016 OEM without Live account

Sorry, but there is no solution at this time.  When there is one, I'm sure it will be posted.  BTW, I highly suggest your company does not purchase the licenses from Dell for Office 2016.  There have been NUMEROUS times listed here that the product keys were already used and could not be activated.  It would be more efficient for your boss to purchase them separately through Newegg or the like.

Others have decided to start testing and installing other office products.

For my part (I am the one that started this thread back in October 2015), I have continued to purchase Office 2013 retail online where it is still available. I will never buy an office product that requires activation through a Live account. There are just too many problems (which is why this thread now has something like 75 replies--virtually all negative. For small IT consultants like myself (and I would imagine there may be hundreds of thousands of us in the US alone), this creates an absolute nightmare attempting to manage Office on behalf of my customers.

So the big questions are these: IS ANYONE AT MICROSOFT LISTENING? If so, DOES ANYONE AT MICROSOFT EVEN CARE ABOUT THIS?

I have finally been forced to come to the only rational conclusion: Microsoft is either arrogant ("we have enough money that we will do it our way or not at all") or both arrogant and stupid ("we are on the verge of losing millions of sales, but we are so focused on getting everyone into Office subscriptions that we don't even notice that"). This will not, in the end, not lead to everyone signing up. It will only lead to people finding (or making) alternatives.

You might consider LibreOffice. It is free and has none of this nonsense. I find it very odd to be forced into posting recommendations against Microsoft products on a Microsoft forum. That would seem inappropriate were it not for the flagrancy of Microsoft's poor choices and/or bad behavior on this issue.

So here it is: MICROSOFT, WE LOVE OFFICE. WE HATE THE LIVE-RELATED ACTIVATION NONSENSE.


 Here, here!  A toast to Brian!  Well said!

MS is really pushing the "cash grab" called subscription licensing (aka Office 365).  Personally, I speculate that with the VNext release of Office (2019/2020?) they will do away with the old "per machine" licenses.  (I hate the idea! as much as I hate losing MSI installs in favor of all CTR installs)

For business users they are most insistent.  If you buy 365 business licenses, then you can easily install and manage them through the "admin portal".  That takes advantage of the "fast painless" background install of 365.  I can give you links to more details about 365 business admin if you wish.

If you wish to continue using the old style licenses all I can suggest is a really bad practice.  Ask for their userids and passwords and tell them to change the passwords after you do the install.  Yes, I know it is an atrocious idea from the security perspective.

I have a link, which I can't find at the moment, that says the install limit is 20-25 product keys on one email account.

You MUST record the product keys and computer ID (serial number) and email account you use to activate it for each machine.  If you want to transfer the Office license / installation to another machine in the future (ie machine dies) you need the product key. But after the activation is done, you have no way of figuring out the key used on that machine if the machine is dead. Which means you have also lost that license.  If you go into the myaccount website with the generic email account, all of the product keys associated with that ID are sorted alphabetically.

PS: I'll second MrCrusher's recommendation to avoid DELL OEM Office licenses (at least for the time being). As he pointed out, several people have had problems with the product keys being "stolen" somewhere along their supply chain.

PS: I call it a cash grab because a MS official has admitted that they can get up to 80% more revenue from some subscriptions (adobe has admitted they have up to doubled profits since going subscription).

2015 12 11- **Adobe: We locked our customers in the cloud and out poured money******

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2015/12/11/adobe_q4_fy2015_results/

<snip>

... up 22 per cent year-on-year, driven by a 44 per cent hike in subscriptionsto $907.4m as products declined 13 per cent to $284.4m and services/ support dipped 1.7 per cent to $114.4m.

</snip>

2015 05 13- Office 365 subscriptions are great for Microsoft

http://new.office-watch.com/2015/office-365-subscriptions-are-great-for-microsoft/

<snip>

The latest financial disclosures from Microsoft show that the move to annual ‘subscriptions (rentals) mean a price increase to customers of up to 80%!

 ....

Finally, these admissions by Microsoft blow their cover on the ‘free’ offer of a Windows 10 upgrade.  It’s being done to put customers on the path to an ongoing rental fee for Windows itself, either for additional features or for ongoing use.

</snip>

I can support this story. Two weeks ago, I received 3 Office 2016 licenses with 3 new dell business laptops. All 3 keys were already activated and added to another account. After talking with Microsoft, they even gave me the email address that the keys were registered under. Suffice to say, it was some random Gmail account that did not belong to any known user. Dell just shipped me 3 more license without question.