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I have purchased a laptop for my daughter which came with office 365 personal free for 1 year. She doesnt need this as gets its free at school. She has setup her own Microsoft account on it and i have also logged into it with my Microsoft account and then installed office which i thought would activate the year and add it to my existing subscription. At no point have we ever had the message to ‘activate office’. Her account just shows her school office and mine shows my office subscription with no date extension. How do i do this please its driving me bonkers!
Processes in Microsoft 365 for setting up Office apps, redeeming product keys, and activating licenses.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
OEM just means ‘Original Equipment Manufacturer’. An OEM licence refers to the licence for software (in the case of Microsoft and computer software) installed on a computer. Are you saying that a trial version of Office 365 does not have a licence? Are you saying that the licence can be transferred?
Are you in the trial period? It won't ask for activation during the trial.
Well interestingly she did mention OEM and was adamant that even adding the free year to my account wouldnt extend my subscription (ie would only be a year from now) and would only enable me to use it for the year on that particular device. 🤷��♀️
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That description is precisely why I don't trust front line MS Support for that sort of question.
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One-time payment OEM licenses are strictly limited to the original device they are activated/installed on. But until someone shows me a screen cap of their MyAccount page with this type of 365 Personal subscription explicitly identified as OEM, I have to guess/"ass"ume that it is a plain jane normal Personal subscription. A normal Personal subscription would extend the subscription of an existing subscription if the same email account was used to activate it.
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As I mentioned in my most recent reply to RonB, I do not see any mention of an OEM category Office 365 Personal type license in the current Office 365 MS License Terms document. No mention there means "legally" it does not exist, so it could not have the limitations that MS Support person suggested.
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PS: "Unless the subscription is an OEM equivalent of 365 Personal" Why do you say the subscription is not OEM the same as other versions of Office and other software? The computer manufacturer will have paid Microsoft for the the licence as they do for Microsoft's other products, including Windows.
Logically, this "free" Office is an OEM license. BUT, it has been identified as 365 Personal. I have not seen any mention anywhere that there now is an "OEM" class Office 365 Personal license. There could be, there logically should be, but I have seen no proof of it. There is no mention of an OEM type Office 365 Personal license with any specific limitation on who can/must activate it in the current 365 MS License Terms document. There were specific license terms for OEM Office 2010
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Yes the manufactures have to buy these licenses from MS.
Yes, I expect they will pay significantly less than US$70 retail price.
Back when 2010 Starter was the "free Office offer" I found some MS documentation that confirmed the manufacturer cost as $1 or $5 for each license.
Well when i go into word on her account and look at the account details it does seem to be active using my email so it seems i did activate it using my account. However the date of my usual subscription hasnt changed (it expires 07/2020) so i can only assume she’s right. Its all a massive con!