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Preventing Office Activation Nightmares

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office activation

Microsoft Office Activation

For those of you have purchased Microsoft Office recently will see that they keep track of your software activations using a newer type activation process compared to their older office products. The Microsoft Office 2016 suite now uses a “Microsoft Account” to keep track of your software installations and allow you to redownload them at a later time if you should need to reinstall.

As a support technician I have been through many headaches with Microsoft Office activations. There is more than one way to install Office 2016 and associate the product key with your account. There is more than one way to do it; however, I am not going to discuss any of these. I am going to outline the most successful process in my experience. Once you have obtained a product key, which can be accomplished in a number of ways, the easiest, is to tell us that you want office and we will get you a product key and make sure you have the correct version for your needs.

Once you have your product key and Microsoft Account, take that product key and use it to install office in the following way:

  • Open a browser to https://setup.office.com
  • Sign in (use your Microsoft Account credentials that you plan on using to keep track of these product keys/activations/licenses)
  • Enter your product key when asked and then hit Next.
  • Keep pressing next until you get prompted to download the office installer
  • Download and install

These simple directions have been the method that has given me the least trouble when installing and activating office. This method embeds the product key within the generated installer which downloads and installs MS Office using your product key automagically.

Once installed, open MS Word and sign in using the same Microsoft Account you used to download the installer and it should not give you any grief about activation. There are other methods to install the new versions of Office; however, I have found this method to have the highest success rate! If you have any questions about these instructions or would like some assistance with this, please do not hesitate to contact us here at Frankenstein Computers, we would be more than happy to help!

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