- Having been on Microsoft Office 365 for a few months now, we started to notice that when users who had activated software on a PC were removed from Office 365, the software would go into 'grace period' and would continually notify the new user of the PC that there was a problem.
- Thank you JoshT76.This solution worked for me, its because my notebook has bundling trial office home and business was installed. And then i install office 2016 pro plus and activated it, after that i got windows update regarding my office 2016. After updated my office, i got notification prompt that my office license being not activate.
- Hi Ishie, The details on how to activate using the Product Key are given on the MSDN portal, you can expand the details section under 'Office Home and Business 2016 for Mac' for the instructions.
'You need to activate Office for Mac within X days' after activating already. Microsoft is aware of and currently working on this issue. If you've activated Office for Mac 2016 but are still seeing a message that says 'You need to activate Office for Mac within X days,' please try these steps to resolve your issue: Run the License Removal Tool.
Simply signing into Office as another User does not change the 'Belongs to' entry in Office 2016. If the person it belongs to doesn't match the signed in person Office 2016 will start showing a licensing error.
It would be nice if there was a change owner button, or something similar, but there isn't. Luckily, it's not too hard to fix.
4 Steps total
Step 1: Open a command prompt
Use your favorite method to get a command prompt open. Winkey+R then CMD, Start then Command Prompt, etc.
NOTE - you need to run this as administrator
Step 2: Run the ospp.vbs command
Run the following command to get the last 5 digits of the product key:
cscript.exe '%ProgramFiles(x86)%Microsoft OfficeOffice16ospp.vbs' /dstatus
Step 3: Run ospp.vbs again, different options
Reset Office 2016
Run the same command again, but change the options. This time you will be unpublishing the key you found in step 2. Replace XXXXX with the key from step 2.
cscript.exe '%ProgramFiles(x86)%Microsoft OfficeOffice16ospp.vbs' /unpkey:XXXXX
Step 4: Exit command prompt, run an Office app
Once you've exited the command prompt open any Office program (Word, Excel, etc.) and you will be prompted to sign in. Whatever account you sign in with will become the 'Belongs to' account.
It only takes a few seconds to do this, but I don't know why MS made it so you have to leave the apps and go CLI for it.
References
Office 2016 Mac Activation
- PS script wrapper to automate these steps
6 Comments
Clear Office 2016 Activation
- DatilJosh_Cunning Oct 13, 2017 at 07:54pm
I have this issue a lot and you might also need to check a few other places for like the Credential Manager
Also you might need to clear this registry entries:
HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftOffice15.0 or 16.0CommonIdentityIdentities
HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftProtected Storage System Provider
HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftOffice15.0 or 16.0CommonIdentity
HKEYU(The Users SID)SoftwareMicrosoftOffice15.0 or 16.0CommonIdentity - Pure CapsaicinDragonsRule Oct 13, 2017 at 07:55pm
I've never had to do any of that, but thanks for the info.
- Pimientotommurphy5 Oct 13, 2017 at 09:11pm
yeah you can do this, good for non-shared activation of Office 365 2016. its worth looking into the Office Deployment Toolkit from MS, you can setup Shared-User activation for systems that have multi users.
- Chipotleuberchemist Feb 1, 2019 at 08:53pm
Running the commands alone did not affect the 'Belongs to:' entry for me, though I am running Office 365, not 2016. But the comment from Josh about clearing the registry entries DID work. Thanks guys!
- AnaheimDiscordantQ Jun 20, 2019 at 01:36pm
is there a fix for Mac for this? or will this work just as well in Terminal?
- Pure CapsaicinDragonsRule Jun 20, 2019 at 01:42pm
Sorry, I have no Apple devices so have no idea.