Install Office 2016 OEM without Live account

Ron, three things:

1. I do not have to activate Windows OEM using a LiveID, so there are none of the complications there that are associated with Office activation, and therefore no factual parallel between Windows and Office in this regard.
2. The question is not about who is liable; it is only about the fact that Live-account-based activation is a big nuisance. I buy a Dell computer for resale to my client. To save my customer the cost of any of my extra time involved in purchasing & installing retail Office, I may buy this computer with OEM Office pre-installed. My clients have always expected me to plant the computer on the desk with Office installed, activated, and fully functional so that the end user can simply start creating documents. And since I do all my system prep at night, I have to create a Live ID on behalf of my customer at night, when my customer is not available (see my initial post, where I explained all of this). Neither I nor my client's management want any software being tied to a specific user's e-mail account when that user may be replaced by another user the next day or the particular computer may be used by different users on different shifts. The licensing does not require that we buy a new copy of Office in this case, yet the activation process, and your response here, both apparently assume the setup user will exist forever at the same computer.  In all of this, I am left now with recording not just product keys, but going through Live account setup. And a client that still prefers to buy Office with each new computer, rather than subscribe to Office 365 or the additional 40% cost of volume licensing will always be in this situation, even with the retail version.
3. You are entirely incorrect regarding the retail version: it has the same Live-based activation process as OEM. I immediately switched from OEM to Retail after my initial post, only to find that I am stuck creating Live ID's for all retail installations, even though I purchase a product with a product key. So in that regard, retail is identical to OEM. In the case of OEM software, in fact, the software has always been tied to the specific hardware, not to a user, so it seems doubly non-sensical to have anything associated with a particular user (i.e. a Live ID).

I will leave legal questions and questions of Microsoft's motivation to others, but one thing is a fact that is not open to interpretation by Microsoft or any Microsoft apologist: my real-life experience, apparently along with that of many who have posted here, demonstrates that Live-account-based activations are much more complex and time-consuming to manage (and therefore more expensive overall) than were product-key-based activations.

I am not a Microsoft apologist.  I say it like I see it. Microsoft is doing everything it can to make it difficult for purchasers of one time retail purchases versions of Office 2013/2016. Microsoft's goal is for people to use subscription services, at the moment it is pushing Office 365. In the future, I believe, there will be subscription additions for Windows 10.

The reason Microsoft came up with combing Office 2013, the first version, with a Microsoft Account was to prevent fraud and to make it easy, not that this worked, for users to be able to reinstall their Office without any problem.  Actually the made one horrible mess.

Having said that, if Office 2013/2016 is properly installed it works fine.  The problem is that it is too easy not to install Office properly.

Re problem "software being tied to a specific user's e-mail account " etc.   This was the advice given re this issue when Office 2013 was first introduced:

"The small business owner can create his/her own “company” Microsoft Account to use and activate the Office 2013 perpetual licenses. The employee will still be able to sign in with their own Microsoft Account and use the product but the license will appear under the “company” Microsoft Account"

You can of course add up to 25 accounts to the Office Account for business Office, not sure about Office for Home and Student, but in any case small businesses would be in breach of licence if they used Home and Student.

I was not originally aware of the 25-account limit, which is not exactly the first thing one would find when surprised by all of this, and around which there was much speculation in earlier posts. So after a few Office 2016 purchases attached to a single company e-mail address & Live account, I got cold feet thinking I might hit some limit and finally migrated to this plan: create an [ComputerSerial#]@OurCompany.com address for the LiveID. I temporarily assign this address as a secondary e-mail address for my domain admin account just until I get the Live account confirmation email and respond. Then remove that address from the admin account and use the newly-created LiveID for that computer's Office 2016 activation.

That all, at least, works, although I now have to keep all that Live account information on record with the rest of the software information for the particular computer. And I do suspect that MS will someday terminate those Live IDs when the e-mails being sent to them bounce because the actual e-mail address no longer exists. I really do not want to keep an admin account with 25 current e-mail addresses just to keep the MS advertising staff happy.  And, by the way, the employee will never have "their own Microsoft account" nor any access to the "company" MS account. I can imagine the havoc that would create if some employee got a personal Live account tied to a work computer or when they might demand access to my domain admin e-mail account when they decide to re-activate something. This is why I am the IT department.

But if Microsoft's purpose in all of this was anti-piracy, it did nothing to improve that situation, at least as far as I am concerned; I have always been absolutely insistent on using properly-purchased Business/Pro versions for all my business clients anyway. And, as much as I dislike all of this and think it is a horrible mess, I am libertarian enough to acknowledge that it is still within Microsoft's right to do it this way even if, in order to do it, they have to be either arrogant or stupid, or perhaps it was no coincidence that this all changed just after Washington State (MS home) legalized pot.

And, for the record, MS is not the only offender in the arrogant or stupid department. I naively purchased Adobe Acrobat DC Pro last week for a customer using my own Amazon reseller account (since I do not like asking my customers for their credit card numbers!). I was careful to enter the customer's admin e-mail account when attempting activating, only to find out that this conflicted with two prior installation of Creative Cloud (a completely different product). Adobe assumes that one person would never need both Creative Cloud and Acrobat (standalone). So I had to create a new AdobeID, using another admin e-mail address, just to add another product. Even then, I found that the very act of purchasing it via my Amazon account had associated it with my e-mail address, and the Creative Cloud support staff refused to answer my query via phone, instead handing me off to a two-hour-long explanatory session via chat with some overseas Adobe employee, then an overseas administrator who had to log onto the computer with me to get the entire thing disassociated from my "account" so I could get it activated for my customer. So that little foray caused the cost of Adobe Acrobat to be somewhere around $600 instead of the $400 it should have been. I guess this is the punishment I get for ensuring everything is legal with the software I buy. Go figure!

Hi Ron:

Sorry, but you are missing the point Brian (and I and several hundred other posters here) are trying to make.

The problem is NOT with OEM installations and licenses, although they do add a certain challenge.  The problem we have is with the fundamental change MS has made to Office licensing, both the 365 pay-forever subscriptions  and the 1-time payment licenses.  The change to user accounts from hardware is causing fundamental problems for non-technical users, like small businesses and personal users.

Non-technicals uses want the same sort of user experience they get with their toaster or their automobile or a light switch.  They turn it on and the gosh darn thing WORKS.  If something doesn't work, give it to the mechanic or electrician let them "make it WORK!  One of the things that they depend on someone else is to install Office. 

Now for bigger businesses who have trained administrators and who make use of the additional features in 365 and can justify the additional cost of 365, provisioning is simple and transparent to the end user through the Business Admin Portal and CTR technology.

But for small "mom and pop" businesses, the change to CTR AND to "per user" licensing is a total, unmanageable disaster.  It is unfortunate. If MS had left the one-time payment license alone as a machine based license (with product keys that could still be extracted from the HD!), everyone would be happy.

Yes, OEM licenses add another to layer of complexity to managing business licenses, but it is NOT the major problem.

"...you should bill your customers for all of the time you spent. Let them see the cost of supporting MS."

 

Absolutely.  Every minute I have to spend dealing with this nonsense gets billed.  And I let the customer know why.  After all, I'm not a Microsoft employee.  Frequently, the cost of dealing with the nonsense is more than the software being installed.  The customers must understand that this is part of the cost of using Microsoft software.  And if Microsoft is going to make life difficult for us, then that cost is going to go up.  I know that there are those at Microsoft who fantasize about everything going cloud and cutting us "middlemen" out of the picture, but the reality is that the end users don't want to figure out and deal with this nonsense any more than we do.  That's why they hire us in the first place.