Office 2013/2003

[bianson]

I bought new PC's and installed Office 2013 on them all. After we converted files over, found that some files were not compatible with the latest version of Publisher. Installed Publisher 2003 from an old copy of Office 2003. I did this on all the machines and all is good.



Then I found out that Outlook 2013 was too complicated for my mother so i uninstalled Office 2013, installed Office 2003 instead and again all was good.

That left me with a legal copy of Office 2013 that wasn't being used so i wanted to install that on my home PC. Since I had all the license numbers, I thought it a simple matter to use Belarc Adviser or Jellybean Key Finder to determine which license was in use on each of the PC's and therefore determine which one was still available to me.

When I run Belarc, it returns the serial number for the Office 2003 installation on each PC and not Office 2013. I tried Jellybean on each the demo versions and it shows me the first 5 characters of what I think is Office 2013 as it says Office 15, but it shows the same characters for each machine I run it on.

Any thoughts? I own all 4 copies legally and it seems a shame that I can't use one.

Bob

[macropod]

If you have a retail copy of Office 2013, where is the product key that came with it? If it's an OEM install, though, you can only legally use it on the PC it was supplied with.

[bianson]

Yes I own all 4 retail copies of Office 2013 and have the license key for them all. My problem is determining which one is the one copy that's not being used.

[macropod]

As yet, neither Belarc Adviser nor the Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder appear to be able to retrieve Office 2013 keys, so you may be out of luck there.

However, you could contact the Microsoft Customer Service for help finding your product key. To contact the Microsoft Customer Service Center in the US or UK, call one of the following numbers:
North America: 1-800-MICROSOFT (1-800-642-7676)
UK: 0844 800 2400
Even without doing that, I doubt it really matters which product key you use on a given PC, provided you have licenses covering all installations. The only time it might be an issue is if you use up all the licensed installations a particular key allows, in which case switch to one of the others.