Office 2013 Activation

[johnrobert]

Customer gave me Dell laptop Win7 to wipe and reinstall it was given to him
I notice there is Office 2013 home and Business installed is there any way to preserve activation
without logging in with an account for reinstall

 

[Porthos]

Dont think so. Problem is does he even have the Key? No way to pull that.

 

[FremontPC]

http://www.opa-backup.de/index_en.php , check the limitations.

 

[Markverhyden]

No key is stored. Just a hash based on the key, machine, etc. If it's not originally his it would be a violation of the EULA anyways.

 

[Mainstay]

Gawd - if the key could simply be saved and re-entered, that would be sweet.

No, we have to spend an additional 1 to 2 hours extracting a live account out of the client so we can play detective and track down which of their 18 email addresses was actually used to register their copy of Office.

Also love it when they hand you the "redemption key card" and wonder why you can't make heads or tails of it.

Would be so much less aggravating and time consuming to simply say, well we'll sell you a fresh copy and document it nicely for you.

But that would require a good customer - we get the users who still bitterly complain to us that the new system doesn't come with Office for free. Because they ALL did not that long ago.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Well, you can either bill the customer for all the detective work, or you can sell them a $100 / year O365 personal subscription that handles three machines.

Honestly, I'm done playing detective. I simply tell the customer how the license works, let them know if they can provide the account credentials I'll happily reinstall the product. And I run the .vbs script that spits out the last octet for my records. If the customer coughs up the login, we're off... if not oh well, sell a new seat.

Just be aware that Oct 17 2020, Office 365's requirements will change, and at that time all perpetual licenses currently in the wild will lose their ability to access Office 365 features. Given that we're less than 3 years now on a $100-$200 investment in a perpetual OEM license of Office 2016, it's starting to make less and less sense to sell it.

P.S. Where did anyone get office for "free"? Because I'd love to know when that happened... It's been a complaint forever that these features weren't standard. But they never have been, and they never will be, and are so important they got turned into a subscription based money printer before the OS did.

 

[johnrobert]

My father in law has got everything in works still
had to find a copy for reinstall

 

[johnrobert]

There are many good free versions of Office why don't people use those.
Most people just do the basics it would be good enough.

 

[NviGate Systems]

Futureshop and Best buy did have promotions years ago that if you purchased a qualifying PC, you would get Office free. However, the key was printed on the receipt and most never saved the keys and then like all thermal receipt they get erased over time.

For the rest of folks when you interrogate them they finally admit "My buddy installed office for me".

 

[HankArnold]

then like all thermal receipt they get erased over time.

That's why God invented databases/spreadsheets!!!

 

[fencepost]

Even more, that's why phones have cameras. Any technology, medical or high-value purchase gets the receipt photographed, often before I leave the store.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Well, you can either bill the customer for all the detective work, or you can sell them a $100 / year O365 personal subscription that handles three machines.

This.

I only sell Office 365 anymore. Microsoft made it too difficult to do anything else.

 

[timeshifter]

Just be aware that Oct 17 2020, Office 365's requirements will change, and at that time all perpetual licenses currently in the wild will lose their ability to access Office 365 features. Given that we're less than 3 years now on a $100-$200 investment in a perpetual OEM license of Office 2016, it's starting to make less and less sense to sell it.

Thanks for that heads-up, wasn't aware of that. I'm working with a customer now to go to Office 365 and I have been imagining the conversation where they'd rather not have the full subscription and buy their desktop license as perpetual.

 

[HCHTech]

Just be aware that Oct 17 2020, Office 365's requirements will change, and at that time all perpetual licenses currently in the wild will lose their ability to access Office 365 features. Given that we're less than 3 years now on a $100-$200 investment in a perpetual OEM license of Office 2016, it's starting to make less and less sense to sell it.

So.... from the article:

Starting October 13, 2020, Office 365 ProPlus or Office perpetual in mainstream support will be required to connect to Office 365 services.

For my small businesses, about the only Office 365 service that matters is connecting to hosted Exchange, but that is the important one. So will there be a perpetual license for any Office version after 2016? One article I read said:

"The company is not ending development of perpetual versions of the suite, but users will need to move to the latest versions in order to access all of Microsoft’s O365 Cloud services."

Up until this change, the expense of Office 365 was high compared to purchasing a perpetual license and keeping it for 6 or 7 years.

e.g. Office Home & Business 2016 Perpetual = Total cost of $229.99. Keep for 6 years = 72 months = $3.20 per month

Office 365 Business Premium (lowest plan that includes desktop applications) = $12.50 per month x 72 = total cost of $900 (391% more)

Even if you assume a new computer every 4 years (aggressive replacement schedule), it's still $4.79 per month for perpetual vs. $12.50 per month for O365 = 261% more. I'll admit I don't know the difference between Office 365 Pro Plus and Office 365 Business Premium, but Pro Plus is currently $12.00 per month, so let's go with that.

With the new change, you can only use perpetual licenses to connect to hosted Exchange while they are in mainsteam support. Is there a rule for how long that is? Office 2013 was released in January 2013, and it's mainstream support ends April of 2018, or 5 years & 3 months. Office 2016, on the other hand, was released September of 2015 and it's mainstream support ends October of 2020, or 5 years & 1 month.

So if we assume that there will be an Office 2019, and it's mainstream support will end 5 years after it is released, then I think the economics are more complicated (your result changes based on when in the lifecycle you purchase the product), but still largely the same.

Let's take the worst-case scenario. Say that Office 2019 is released in October of 2018 and you need a new computer in September of 2018 and purchase a perpetual license of the only available product at that time, Office 2016. That means you can only use the product until October of 2020, or 25 months. Your cost is then $229 / 25 or $9.16 per month. Office 365 Pro Plus is $12.00 per month, or 131% more expensive.

Now move to the best-case scenario - purchase Office 2019 in October of 2018 and you get a full 5 years use = $229 / 60 = $3.82/mo. Office 365 Pro Plus is still $12.00/mo, or 314% more expensive. I think I'm going to keep recommending and buying perpetual licenses for my clients that don't obviously need O365 service besides hosted exchange.

It's no wonder MS is trying to force our hand. Why settle for $3.82 per month per user when you can get $12?

I'm sure all of this will be made moot when Microsoft removes enough other important features from perpetual licenses to "encourage" a larger percent to migrate to O365. For me, this current change isn't enough to do that.

 

[fencepost]

I'll admit I don't know the difference between Office 365 Pro Plus and Office 365 Business Premium,

Pro Plus will run on terminal servers, Business Premium will not. I believe that there's a cap on how many Business Premium you can have on an account (300?) but I don't recall the details and don't have stuff up in front of me right now.

I was looking at it for a customer on O2007 with a terminal server but only a relatively small # of users on the TS. They were about to move their LOB software to a cloud hosted version, at which point I was going to be looking at the question of whether it would make sense to scrap the bulk of their in-office servers which are OLD and move them to all local PCs with just a file storage/AD server. Part of the factor there would be the cost of different versions of Office if the TS was sticking around.

I hate MS licensing.

 

[HCHTech]

Pro Plus will run on terminal servers, Business Premium will not. I believe that there's a cap on how many Business Premium you can have on an account (300?) but I don't recall the details and don't have stuff up in front of me right now.

Ahh, that explains why I've never run into the need for it. I swim in the shallow end of the pool and just don't have or want clients big enough where that would apply.

 

[ccritchie]

What do you get with O365 Business Premium that you don't get with the retail boxed copy of Office? Plenty. At least, that's the way that Microsoft is positioning themselves. Office is a lot more than Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. O365 also offers OneDrive (1 terabyte of cloud storage per user), SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business, Planner, Sway, etc. Now, the question is whether or not users really need those cloud-based apps, but just understand that is the direction MS is going. (At this point, I'm referring to business versions, not home editions of the software)

So, it's not a fair comparison to just look at boxed retail software vs. what you pay per month for O365. Another consideration and difference is the tight integration between those cloud products and the "legacy" software with which we're so familiar. That will increasingly not be available with the boxed retail versions. The development for MS Office is and will be happening on the cloud platform rather than with the traditional software. This is not unique to Microsoft - Intuit, Adobe and others are doing this as well. This is simply where the industry is headed.

 

[timeshifter]

Office 365 Business Premium (lowest plan that includes desktop applications) = $12.50 per month x 72 = total cost of $900 (391% more)

You can get a subscription (forget what they call it) that is just desktop applications without email for about $8 / month.

 

[cypress]

I find it extremely rare when a client has all this serial keys. If that happens then they are a keeper in my eyes.

Gotta be up front and tell them if they don't have a license key they you cannot reinstall the program. This is where paperwork comes in handy. Everyone seems to think Office is free. I still have Windows Office Starter and install it on Windows 7 machines if they don't have it.

But I highly encourage clients to get purchase Office 365. I also make note of the key myself if I install it for them for any future work down the line.

 

[Sky-Knight]

So.... from the article:

Starting October 13, 2020, Office 365 ProPlus or Office perpetual in mainstream support will be required to connect to Office 365 services.

For my small businesses, about the only Office 365 service that matters is connecting to hosted Exchange, but that is the important one. So will there be a perpetual license for any Office version after 2016? One article I read said:

"The company is not ending development of perpetual versions of the suite, but users will need to move to the latest versions in order to access all of Microsoft’s O365 Cloud services."

Up until this change, the expense of Office 365 was high compared to purchasing a perpetual license and keeping it for 6 or 7 years.

e.g. Office Home & Business 2016 Perpetual = Total cost of $229.99. Keep for 6 years = 72 months = $3.20 per month

Office 365 Business Premium (lowest plan that includes desktop applications) = $12.50 per month x 72 = total cost of $900 (391% more)

Even if you assume a new computer every 4 years (aggressive replacement schedule), it's still $4.79 per month for perpetual vs. $12.50 per month for O365 = 261% more. I'll admit I don't know the difference between Office 365 Pro Plus and Office 365 Business Premium, but Pro Plus is currently $12.00 per month, so let's go with that.

With the new change, you can only use perpetual licenses to connect to hosted Exchange while they are in mainsteam support. Is there a rule for how long that is? Office 2013 was released in January 2013, and it's mainstream support ends April of 2018, or 5 years & 3 months. Office 2016, on the other hand, was released September of 2015 and it's mainstream support ends October of 2020, or 5 years & 1 month.

So if we assume that there will be an Office 2019, and it's mainstream support will end 5 years after it is released, then I think the economics are more complicated (your result changes based on when in the lifecycle you purchase the product), but still largely the same.

Let's take the worst-case scenario. Say that Office 2019 is released in October of 2018 and you need a new computer in September of 2018 and purchase a perpetual license of the only available product at that time, Office 2016. That means you can only use the product until October of 2020, or 25 months. Your cost is then $229 / 25 or $9.16 per month. Office 365 Pro Plus is $12.00 per month, or 131% more expensive.

Now move to the best-case scenario - purchase Office 2019 in October of 2018 and you get a full 5 years use = $229 / 60 = $3.82/mo. Office 365 Pro Plus is still $12.00/mo, or 314% more expensive. I think I'm going to keep recommending and buying perpetual licenses for my clients that don't obviously need O365 service besides hosted exchange.

It's no wonder MS is trying to force our hand. Why settle for $3.82 per month per user when you can get $12?

I'm sure all of this will be made moot when Microsoft removes enough other important features from perpetual licenses to "encourage" a larger percent to migrate to O365. For me, this current change isn't enough to do that.

The only perpetual licensing that makes any sense if you plan on using Office 365 long term, is volume. Because then you can purchase upgrade assurance and have the next release when it launches. OEM and Retail are essentially dead. This leaves you with two paths...

1.) Volume Office, perpetual license. This is a large capital expense up front, no monthly fee, has an annual renewal for upgrade assurance, and is done PER DEVICE!
2.) Office 365 subscription. No large capital investment, easy to predict monthly fee, and is done PER USER!

Never forget that all enterprise level Office 365 installations can be had on up to five devices. When you've got a business owner with a desktop, a laptop, a phone, and a tablet, you end up with all four environments ready, licensed, and done with Office 365. They're integrated automatically too. If you go perpetual you have to license each device separately. Generally speaking we have more devices than we have users.

I know of a few places that once they go 365 start offering extra installs to the employees as a perk as well.

Oh, and one more thing... You know that Pro Plus subscription? You need that for terminal server? Yeah... you're required to have enough of those to match your RDS user CAL count, if you don't you're not in compliance, which is insane given that the software has enforcement that works. So if you get audited, you'll need to crank up your license count until the audit is over. If you do Volume Pro Plus that's per device and also must match the CAL count on the RDS server.