5

I just acquired two Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus keys. But I'm replacing the machine that I have soon. I don't want to have to use one key on the current machine and then use up the other key when I get the new machine.

Isn't there a way of "uninstalling" office that would effectively place the key back in my pool? That way I have no problem moving the license to a new machine.

IAmAN00B
  • 163
  • 1
  • 1
  • 7

2 Answers2

6

The standard way of doing this is just uninstalling the copy of Office from the current computer and—because Microsoft only gets notified of new installs/activations, not uninstalls/deactivations—then using phone activation when you've hit the activation limit permitted by your license. If you explain the situation to them, they should give you a new key to activate Office on your new computer.

See this Technet question and this Superuser question.

Community
  • 1
Lèse majesté
  • 3,301
0

I use the ospp.vbs script that ships with Office (2016 in my case):

C:\WINDOWS\system32>cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16

cscript ospp.vbs /dstatus

---Processing--------------------------
---------------------------------------
PRODUCT ID:....
LICENSE STATUS:  ---LICENSED---
Last 5 characters of installed product key: XXXXX

cscript ospp.vbs /unpkey:XXXXX

---Processing--------------------------
---------------------------------------
Uninstalling product key for: Office 16, Office16ProPlusXXXXX_Retail edition
<Product key uninstall successful>
---------------------------------------
---Exiting-----------------------------

The exact workflow depends on the Office version in question. See https://www.forscope.eu/software-support/how-to-uninstall-windows-and-office-product-keys/

wp78de
  • 1,742