Office 2016 does not activate

Question

I just bought Office 2016 Standard edition. I installed it, ran Windows Update to get the latest patches and now I want to activate Office.

In the activation dialog I can either login to an account having a license or enter the product key.

I enter the product key, Office accepts it but the next time I start Office it asks me again for the key. But I did not get any error entering the key.

What can I do now?

Solution 1

Adding all patches before activating Office seems to lead to errors. Do the following:

1. De-install Office
2. Install Office
3. Start an Office application, like for instance Word
4. Activate it with your Product Key
5. Close Word
6. Run Windows Update to get the latest version of your Office suite

Solution 2

I've run into something like this before. If you were using a trial or pre-installed version of Office that came with your PC, the key that it used is still stored by Windows even after installing the full version. You'll need to remove the old key before using the new one.

1. Open command prompt
2. Navigate to your Office installation folder, likely C:Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16 or C:Program Files(x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16
3. Enter cscript ospp.vbs /dstatus to see a list of currently-installed keys
4. Identify the old key
5. Enter cscript ospp.vbs /unpkey:value where "value" is the last five characters of the previous key
6. You might want to use cscript ospp.vbs /dstatus again to ensure that any old keys have been successfully removed

Once you do this, you shouldn't have trouble activating Office with your new key.

Also see: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/vlactivation/tools-to-manage-volume-activation-of-office