Oem version of microsoft office

That again missed the point entirely if not downright avoiding it. It is nice to know I am not the only one beginning to suspect that the activation difficulties may be intentional. Of course, it affects the independent consultant far worse than anyone else.

Larger companies can take their soma with a nod to Huxley's Brave New World and have no problem setting up corporate accounts; single-user companies that do their own software have little choice and must do the same or set up the MS account in the owner's or user's name.

But the outside consultant that provides service and computers to small businesses is peculiarly stuck. We cannot use our own accounts, or the licenses are stuck to us forever. But the owner's birthday is also none of our business--and not easily obtainable at midnight even if it were. And what if a computer or the entire business, with its computers is sold?

How does the new owner reinstall Office if required? I guess that is one way for MS to generate more revenue--make the activation process quirky enough that it is actually easier to just buy a fresh copy than it is to reinstall. After several hours of beating one's head against the wall on this at midnight, it definitely leads one to feel as though Microsoft has more sinister designs towards independent consulting--or perhaps toward independent thought entirely. To make matters worse, Microsoft seems to think everyone has gigabits of bandwidth lying around waiting to be used.

At least SBS meant email trickled in and out in the background, it was slow but workable. There is no way I can expect these clients to suffer through miserable email speed as well as a 1GB download per PC to install office as well as the Microsoft ID issue, nor are they willing to stump up the considerable costs in licencing to run full blown Exchange internally.

I am also wondering how MS thinks small businesses operate? There is usually regular staff turnover so MS ID's per user are not viable. If we move those with decent internet links to Office then the licences can be transferred to other users but as mentioned above, this is not always possible.

There is also no way they will be prepared to spend three times the cost per seat for volume licencing. I have been creating a generic Microsoft ID literally microsoftid clientdomain as an alias on an existing account usually the admin account that I have access to, a generic birthdate and the business owners mobile number to activate Office Home and Business so I can download and install on my 70mbps connection.

I have not yet had any issues but also have not connected more than activations to any one account. When that happens, it will require microsoftid2 clientdomain etc. A few things concern me though, also my clients, such the privacy and security off all these PC's making direct connections to MS cloud services under the one account.

Users are being told to only save data to internal file servers but there does appear to be some two way history that sometimes comes through to another machine such as recent files. For non-business users, I simply hand them a licence key card and tell them that unfortunately for reasons outside my control, I cannot install this for them unless they trust me with their MS ID login, they will need to do it themselves and if they dont have a Microsoft ID, they will need to create one or move to the free Libre Office if it has enough functionality for what they need.

Not a word of which products, if any, might allow activation by product key only. Of course, I cannot charge my clients for my headaches or extra time involved, but I will charge them the extra for retail. The loss of time for me is just too significant for me to risk repeating this beating-head-against-wall over OEM licensing! I guess I will just keep the for when I get a new computer and can put it on my own MS account. But that is not something I can repeat regularly.

You could with but you cannot even buy Office with installation media , it is just a product key card and you cannot even download it, let alone activate it without a Live ID. At least not here in Australia. I refuse to do this, if I order new computers I am not making MS accounts, nor am I going to pile them all into one account because we'd never know which key went to which machine.

But regardless, this is a huge problem. I can't activate these machines on a one-by-one basis, no sane IT department would undertake the task of creating discrete Live accounts for each and every new machine they get.

That's what OEM licensing is supposed to be. Details required : characters remaining Cancel Submit 14 people found this reply helpful. Very glad I opened this thread, now. I thought maybe I was missing some simple workaround or was the only one bothered by all of this nonsense. As one user posted, it seems that the same applies to the retail license the same as OEM. Sure, I'm going to give my corporate MS account information to Uri's Used Computer sales so they can use the license they legitimately purchased with the used computer.

It is obvious this is obnoxious behavior from Microsoft. Not sure if they are mean, or just stupid. But the big question is whether we can get Microsoft to reconsider this obnoxious behavior?

Their tech support has no say over how things are done. Is there anybody at Microsoft that actually cares what the customer thinks? You can find cheap iterations on eBay such as:. Skip to main content. Shop by Category.

All Auction Buy It Now. View: Gallery View. For Operating Systems. Number of Devices. License Category. Buying Format.

Only 2 left. Dell Microsoft Works 8. Genuine Microsoft Office 4. Dell do not provide software disks. I then spoke with Microsoft and they said they do not provide downloads for OEM, only retail versions. By the way they understand my client's dilemma and are very sorry. So here we have a classic situation where neither multi-billion dollar company will help a customer. Go to Solution. Office Download. View solution in original post. When your client purchased the computer and received it from Dell there was an MPI Card inside the box with the computer.

With this card the customer could go to the Microsoft Website and re-download office whenever he needed it as long as he had the MPI card with the office product key. You would click my name in blue, then on the next page in the upper right corner, click the words "send private message".

The client has the MPI Card, however the product key was not accepted. The website will only download if using a Retail product key. Dell and Microsoft have been paid by my client, and probably millions more. But they are not willing to help people, other than make them re-purchase Office. Microsoft even had the nerve to send me a Customer Satisfaction Survey. I'm fed up! This has been the case since office 95,97, , XP, ,,, I too am a user.

Microsoft ? I need what was on the laptop while I was shopping. What to do to restore Office ? I'm having a similar issue as purchased my Dell with MS Office It recently became corrupted and I wasn't able to fix or reinstall.