Office 365 [22 May 2017] serial key or number

A question from Daniel: &#;I am sure that one of you mentioned that it’s possible to purchase Office keys in advance under Open and FPP and have up to 5 years to activate them.  Could you please confirm that as we have a client who is interested in buying 3 year term instead of 12 month subscription.&#;

This is a very common question and there are two terms to remember here.

1 &#; You have five years to redeem (activate) an Office key after the purchase date

2 &#; You cannot have more than 2 years&#; Office service at a time

So if a customer with users has an amount of cash they wish to use in a financial period and they&#;d like to buy Office plan E3 in advance for several years they can purchase 5 x Office E3 user keys.  Office uses dynamic keys, for example if a customer has 25 users, they will receive one digit activation key which will enable all 25 users licences when that key is redeemed.  This also applies to a customer with users: 1 activation key.  So for our example you don&#;t want to buy  E3 licences as that will result in one activation key for users.  Instead, purchase 5 lots of E3 SKUs for users.  That will result in 5 activation keys.  Use the first key in year 1, then when your office service is coming up for renewal pop up to the Microsoft Volume Licensing Service Centre (VLSC) and get the next key for year 2 and so on.

There are risks to this.  Many cloud services have gone down in price so the customer may be losing out by buying future years in advance.  And if they need to downsize to less than users, they can&#;t change those keys.

Lastly, let&#;s examine the evidence here as I like to include my sources where possible.

The &#;Office Open & FPP Business Policy and Service Activation Partner Guide&#; dated December lays out some Product Key Subscription Management Policies including:

• Product Key Subscriptions cannot have more than two (2) years of service time outstanding.
• To renew a Product Key Subscription, the Product Key required must include a greater than or equal to number of user licenses as is already assigned to the service.

The &#;Office Open & Office FPP FAQ&#; updated November 22nd, states &#;Product keys must be redeemed within 5 years from the time that they are purchased from Microsoft.&#;

Last updated: March,

The issues listed below reflect the issues caused by the most recent product updates. For more troubleshooting help, see Troubleshoot installing Office below.

Office for Windows

Activation error: "Telephone activation is no longer supported for your product" [PARTIAL FIX]

Clicking Next button doesn't work during install of Office Premium (Japan Only)

Office for Mac

Microsoft AutoUpdate offers incorrect version updates [FIXED]

Microsoft AutoUpdate for Office for Mac is broken [FIXED]

Office for Android

Good news! There are no installation or activation issues affecting Office for Android currently. All cylinders are firing.

Office in the Microsoft Store

Office icons are blank after installing from the Microsoft Store [WORKAROUND]

Error: "This app can't run on your PC" when installing Office from My Account page

Garbled or incorrect characters show up in the Japanese version of Office in the Microsoft Store [FIXED]

Mix of English and Serbian displayed in Office apps [WORKAROUND]

Troubleshoot installing Office

Troubleshoot installing Office and Office

Office is taking long to install

Error messages or problems while installing Office

Unlicensed Product and activation errors in Office

What to try if you can't install or activate Office for Mac

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Common sense and software companies advise users to save their product keys securely in case they need them in the future, such as when re-installing your operating system. After all, you don’t want to reformat your hard drive and reinstall Windows only to find out that you don’t know what your Windows product key is. Unfortunately, that ever-so-important key can sometimes be misplaced or lost. In many cases though, keys can be recovered in Windows—no need to rummage through purchase e-mails or disk cases.

We offer two approaches for you to recover your Windows product key: searching through the Registry Editor or with a third party program. However, please note that both methods will require administrator rights to your Windows machine.

Windows 7 & Windows 8

Registry Editor

1. Search and open Regedit via the Search function in Windows 7 or 8.
   
2. In the left pane of the Registry Editor, navigate to the following directory:
   

   Windows 7	HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Win7
   Windows 8	HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Win8

   

3. Right-click on the entry named ProductId and select Modify.
   
4. The product key will be displayed in a new window.
   

Third Party Program

You can also retrieve your Windows product key via a third party program such as NirSoft ProduKey, which scans your Windows registry file for the product keys of other software. Install and run ProduKey to view a list of product keys stored in your registry file. However, it cannot find product keys for all programs. Most notably, Microsoft Office and Office do not store their product keys in the registry file.

Office & Office

Office and Office do not store their product keys in an easily accessible location in the registry file and many third party programs cannot scan for them. However, you can use a script to find the last five digits of the product key.

1. Open the Command Prompt by searching for “cmd” in Windows.
   
2. In the command prompt, type or paste in the following:
   

   Windows (bit)
   Office (bit)	cscript &#;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\cromwellpsi.com&#; /dstatus
   Office (bit)	cscript &#;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\cromwellpsi.com&#; /dstatus
   Windows (bit)
   Office (bit)	cscript &#;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\cromwellpsi.com&#; /dstatus
   Office (bit)	cscript &#;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\cromwellpsi.com&#; /dstatus
   Office (bit)	cscript &#;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office15\cromwellpsi.com&#; /dstatus
   Office (bit)	cscript &#;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\cromwellpsi.com&#; /dstatus

   *Please note that if Office is not installed on your C: drive, you will need to update the drive letter in the above script appropriately.

   

3. Once you have the last five digits, you can then back track the full key using the last five digits by contacting Microsoft.

Losing a product key does not mean you have to purchase the product again, as most of the time you can recover it by scanning through the registry file.

Have you ever lost a product key and needed to recover it?

How to Recover Your Microsoft Product Key - HardBoiled

Lost your Microsoft Windows or Office product key? Not all hope is lost, as you can recover them with the right tools and know-how.