After going through an incredible bunch of nonsense to get Office 2016 activated on 5 PC's (https://community.spiceworks.com/top...ion-nightmare?), I have again been smacked down by the lunacy that is Microsoft's idiotic Office activation process.



I purchased two Dell computers, both preloaded with MS Office 2016 Home & Biz. They are for two new employees. Because I have had such a nightmare activating products under my Office account, and because folks are thinking they want to take advantage of OneDrive, I decided I would register these copies under the email addresses of our new employees.

I duly enter the product keys for the first PC. I get the message that I need to complete activation by registering my Office product online. I click OK, I get a browser window that says 'Sign In' or 'Create Account'. I create an account for my first employee. It says that a verification email is being sent to the email address.

But... but... but... Outlook doesn't work... it's not activated! I try verifying through OWA but the verify link doesn't work. I'm stumped with this chicken and egg problem... can't start Outlook without verifying the email address, can't verify the email address without Outlook running.

I contact MS chat and explain the situation. Twice, I am simply cut off, one person saying I need to verify, the other simply just leaving the chat without any response at all.

I enter chat a third time. This time, the person I connect with says that I must register the Office products with the email address I used to purchase the products from Dell. I am dumbfounded. I contact Dell and they confirm that this is a Microsoft requirement.

Back to MS, I ask, "so what if the purchasing manager purchased these PC's? How am I to access the purchasing manager's email account when I am the IT grunt setting up the PC's?" The answer was, "that's just the way it is". That ends my third chat.

However, it was my email address so I enter the keys all over again and login to office.com with my email. Now I have 8 copies of Office but at least I can distinguish this product because of the date... today.

It downloads, it registers, I am activated! Hallelujah! I fire up the second PC. I enter the key. I login to office.com with my email. Now, there are two copies of Office with the same date. I look at they keys associated with each. Neither has a key that I entered. So, I choose one at random.

Bad choice... it must be the wrong one because after downloading the Office is not activated and asks me how I want to activate... by internet or by phone. I already know from past experience that internet will not work and that it will take an MS tech at least one hour to re-install and activate, so I choose phone.

Since I have a smart phone, I call and they send me a link to an app. I am required to enter 8 sets of 7 digit numbers (that's 72 in all folks). In return I get back 8 six digit numbers which I am required to enter into Office, and it is activated.

Who came up with this utterly ridiculous process? MS has got to be spending millions on its Indian help desk dealing with people over and over with the same problem. You can tell it's a morale killer... people just disconnect the chat... there is no answer... there is no solution.

Question to Microsoft: How is a new user supposed to setup a new Office account when the email address cannot be verified because Outlook is not activated?

Question to Microsoft: What are you going to do about the absolute activation mess wherein a key entered for a product cannot be found amongst all the products listed in my account?

As is stated at the bottom of every page in these forums:
In any event, Outlook isn't the only program you could use to access the verification email and it doesn't have to be done from the PC you're trying to install Office on...

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

As I noted in my original post, I attempted to use OWA to access the verification email... this is a hosted Exchange service email. The verification link would not work.

As we don't allow POP3 or IMAP access to our Exchange accounts, I don't know what other program would do the trick. Perhaps I could have set email up on a mobile device... but the fact remains that MS activation is a circular process.